KYIV: Ukraine said Thursday that its forces had struck a Russian training ground on the Russia-occupied bank of the Dnipro River in the southern Kherson region, killing or wounding dozens of troops.
Military spokeswoman Natalia Gumeniuk said on television the attack took place Wednesday, striking a range where Russian storm troops were training.
“The work was carried out quite effectively: at least 60 invaders will definitely not return to combat positions,” said Gumeniuk, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Operational Command South.
She later told AFP that three strikes hit a training ground near the village of Podo-Kalynivka, with around 60 Russian troops “killed or seriously wounded.”
The Telegram channel of southern defense forces posted aerial video footage showing explosions and soldiers lying on the ground.
The attack came after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that Moscow forces had reclaimed a Ukrainian bridgehead around the village of Krynky on the Moscow-occupied bank of the Dnipro River.
The Ukrainian army denied the claim.
Gumeniuk said the training ground hit by the strike Wednesday was being used by soldiers deployed to attack the bridgehead.
One of the largest Russian Telegram blogs writing about the war, Rybar, said Thursday that there were three strikes on a training ground in a national park area of sand dunes called Oleshkivski Pisky, around 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Krynky.
Rybar said fighting was also continuing in Krynky, where small numbers of Ukrainian troops remain, with Ukraine sending artillery and drones from the opposite bank of the river under its control.
Ukraine reportedly carried out a similar strike on a training ground near the Russian-controlled eastern town of Volnovakha in the Donetsk region on Tuesday, with numerous casualties.
The BBC Russian Service reported that troops from Russia’s 36th motorized rifle brigade based in Siberia were lined up on the training ground waiting for a commander to arrive, and at least 60 may have been killed.
Rybar said the attack was carried out using US-made HIMARS rocket systems.
The governor of the region where the brigade was from called the information “spurious” but promised help to the soldiers’ families.
Ukrainian authorities have not commented.
Russian war bloggers criticized the military leadership, saying such gatherings of large numbers of troops on open ground made easy targets.
Ukraine claims strike on Russian army range near Dnipro river
https://arab.news/rdc49
Ukraine claims strike on Russian army range near Dnipro river
- Military spokeswoman Natalia Gumeniuk said on television the attack took place Wednesday, striking a range where Russian storm troops were training
- “The work was carried out quite effectively: at least 60 invaders will definitely not return to combat positions”
Russia slams Western peacekeeping plan for Ukraine
- “The new militarist declarations of the so-called Coalition of the Willing and the Kyiv regime together form a genuine ‘axis of war’,” Zakharova
- She called the plans drafted by Kyiv’s allies “dangerous” and “destructive“
MOSCOW: Russia on Thursday slammed a plan for European peacekeepers to be deployed to Ukraine as “dangerous” and dubbed Kyiv and its allies an “axis of war,” dousing hopes the plan could be a step toward ending the almost four-year-war.
US President Donald Trump has been pushing the warring sides to strike a deal to halt the conflict, running shuttle diplomacy between Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in a bid to get an agreement across the line.
An initial 28-point plan which largely adhered to Moscow’s demands was criticized by Kyiv and Europe, and now Russia has slammed the attempts to beef-up protections for Ukraine should an elusive deal be reached.
Ukraine’s allies said they had agreed key security guarantees for Kyiv at a summit in Paris earlier this week, including a peacekeeping force.
But in its first comments since the summit, Moscow said the statements were far away from anything the Kremlin could accept to end its assault.
“The new militarist declarations of the so-called Coalition of the Willing and the Kyiv regime together form a genuine ‘axis of war’,” Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
She called the plans drafted by Kyiv’s allies “dangerous” and “destructive.”
The remarks come as Russian strikes plunged hundreds of thousands in Ukraine into darkness, leaving families without heat in below-freezing temperatures — attacks that Zelensky said showed Russia was still set on war.
- ‘Legitimate military targets’ -
European leaders and US envoys announced earlier this week that post-war guarantees for Ukraine would include a US-led monitoring mechanism and a European multinational force to be deployed when the fighting stops.
But Moscow has repeatedly warned that it would not accept any NATO members sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.
“All such units and facilities will be considered legitimate military targets for the Russian Armed Forces,” Zakharova said Thursday, repeating a threat previously uttered by Putin.
Zelensky also said Thursday that a bilateral agreement between Kyiv and Washington for US security guarantees was “essentially ready for finalization at the highest level with the President of the United States” following talks between envoys in Paris this week.
Kyiv says legally-binding assurances that its allies would come to its defense are essential to convince Russia not to re-attack if a ceasefire is reached.
But specific details on the guarantees, the European force, and how it would engage have not been made public.
Zelensky said earlier this week he was yet to receive an “unequivocal” answer of what they would do if Russia does attack again after a deal.
Zelensky has also said that the most difficult questions in any settlement — territorial control of the eastern Donbas region and the fate of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — were still unresolved.
- Russian strikes cut heating -
Ukraine was meanwhile scrambling to restore heating and water to hundreds of thousands of households after a new barrage targeted energy facilities in its Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
“This is truly a national level emergency,” Borys Filatov, mayor of Dnipropetrovsk’s capital Dnipro, said on Telegram.
He announced power was “gradually returning to the hospitals” after the blackouts forced them to run on generators. The city authorities also extended school holidays for children.
About 600,000 households in the region remained cut off from power in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian energy company DTEK said.
In a post on social media, Zelensky said the attacks “clearly don’t indicate that Moscow is reconsidering its priorities.”
In addition to the unrelenting pummelling of Dnipropetrovsk, Russia pressed on with its ground assault on the region, claiming to have taken another village there.
It is not one of the five Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims to have annexed.
