This increase in troops creates “tangible pressure” on the Ukrainian army, Zelenskyy said. Meanwhile, the chief commander of the Ukrainian army, Valery Saludzhny, said the situation at the front was “complicated but under control”. However, Ukraine is dependent on further aid. “The superiority of enemy artillery shows the need to increase the firepower of the Ukrainian army,” Zaluzhny said. “The issue of integrated air defense is also essential.”
Both sides reported successes in the bitter fighting in Ukraine on Thursday. While in eastern Ukraine pro-Russian separatists reported the capture of two villages near the industrial town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, the Russian-appointed administration in the Kherson region requested help from Moscow to evacuate civilians in view of the Ukrainian advance. – a sign of the successful advance of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south of the country.
Moscow promised an evacuation action on Thursday. After the call from the leadership of the Kherson region, the government decided “to organize help for the residents of the region to leave for other regions,” said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Chusnullin on television. All those affected would receive “free accommodation and everything necessary”.
The residents of the Kherson region are said to be taken to the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia and to the southern Russian regions of Rostov, Krasnodar and Stavropol. The Cherson region in southern Ukraine, which Russia has declared annexed, has been the target of a counter-offensive by the Ukrainian army for several weeks.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with International Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi on Thursday in an air raid shelter in Kyiv. He emphasized that Russia “must leave the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant to make it safe and stop kidnapping and intimidating its Ukrainian personnel,” Kuleba said.
The largest nuclear power plant in Europe in southern Ukraine has been occupied by Russian troops since March. It has come under repeated fire, with Russia and Ukraine blaming each other for it. Grossi advocates a protection zone around the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. To this end, he met the Russian head of state Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.
