Kiev: defensive successes in the east
Kremlin troops apparently conquer important island
02/24/2022, 10:55 p.m
As Russian troops advance into the Kiev area, the Ukrainian government signals the possible loss of a strategically important island in the Black Sea. In the east of the country, however, the Kremlin’s armies have failed to make a decisive breakthrough.
According to Ukraine, Russian troops may have conquered Snake Island in the Black Sea. Contact with the border guard and soldiers there had been broken off, the border guard service said in the evening. “The enemy” surrounded the island all day long and fired at it with ship cannons.
Snake Island is one of the few islands that Ukraine possesses. It is strategically important, especially for rights to mineral resources in the sea and has long been disputed between Romania and Ukraine. The small snake island was the subject of an amicably settled territorial dispute between Romania and Ukraine in the early 2000s.
Meanwhile, the situation in the east of the country near the areas controlled by the separatists remains uneasy. According to a report by the Ukrainian army, the situation in the Donetsk theater of operations is tense but controlled by the army. The shelling by Russia continues. In the direction of Luhansk, the heaviest fighting was said to have taken place during the day around the towns of Shchastya, Stanytsia Luhanska, Lobacheve and Bilovodsk. In the fighting for Shchastya, two enemy tanks were destroyed and one tank and one anti-aircraft gun were captured, it said. In Shchastya the army took several prisoners.
Russia reports crash of transport plane
Despite extensive attacks, “the enemy” failed to penetrate deep into Ukraine from the east. All important settlements and important infrastructure are kept. According to the current status, no further attempts at a breakthrough by “the enemy” have been registered. Fire activity has decreased in some places. The information could not initially be verified independently.
The Russian side reported the crash of a military plane that killed the crew. The reason for the accident of the Antonov An-26 transport plane in the southern Russian region of Voronezh was probably a technical error, the western military district told the TASS agency. The machine was on a planned flight to transport military equipment. There was no property damage on the ground. There was initially no information about the number of victims. Normally, the An-26 has five crew members.