The Russian army again claimed on Friday to have “improved” its positions in northeastern Ukraine, where its offensive notably prompted the local authorities the day before to evacuate civilians. The Russian army also fired four Kinjal hypersonic missiles on Friday into western Ukraine, an area rarely targeted by strikes, killing an eight-year-old child in the Ivano Frankivsk region.
The main information:
– Russia says it has “improved” its positions in northeastern Ukraine
– Zelensky dismisses all regional military recruiters
– A strike on Zaporizhia on Thursday kills one person and injures 16
Nearly 240,000 shells delivered under EU military aid plan
The European Union has delivered 223,800 shells to Ukraine as part of the first part of a plan to provide one million artillery shells to help Kiev against Russia, a spokesman said Friday. In March, the EU approved a two-billion-euro plan to send one million 155mm shells to Ukraine from member states’ stocks this year and fund joint ammunition purchases for Kiev.
Evacuation of 37 settlements in the Kupiansk district
The Russian army had been driven out of the city of Kupyansk and its surroundings, which it had occupied since the start of the conflict, by a Ukrainian lightning counter-attack in September 2022. For the past few weeks, it has been in this area that she went back on the attack, regularly claiming territorial gains. “In the direction of Kupyansk, the assault units of the ‘Western’ combat groups (…) continued their offensive operations on a broad front and improved the tactical situation”, assured the Russian Ministry of Defense in its daily report. According to him, the Russian forces notably improved their positions on Friday near the villages of Olchana and Perchotravnevé, in the Kharkiv region.
Faced with this progress, the local authorities on Thursday ordered the evacuation of 37 localities in the Kupyansk district, mainly villages located near the front. The Ukrainian army, launched since the beginning of June in a difficult counter-offensive which has only enabled it to retake a handful of villages, reported on Thursday a “difficult but under control” situation in the Kupyansk sector, a formulation commonly used by Kiev during pushes from its enemy.
Strikes on recreational sites
At the same time, Russian drones and missiles continue to target cities and towns on a daily basis, sometimes far inside Ukrainian territory. Unusually, a strike hit the Ivano-Frankivsk region on Friday morning, far from the fighting and rarely targeted. “An eight-year-old boy died,” Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office said on Telegram.
The Ukrainian Air Force reported on Telegram that four hypersonic Kinjal missiles had been fired by Mig-31 bombers towards this region, one having been destroyed over Kiev, the others having hit an airfield and civil infrastructure in Kolomya.
Zelensky fires regional military recruiting officials
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Friday the dismissal of all regional officials responsible for military recruitment to uproot a system of corruption that notably allows conscripts to escape the army. “Illegal enrichment, legalization of illegally obtained funds, illicit profits, illegal transport across the border of conscripts. Our solution: we dismiss all military commissars”, announced on Telegram Volodymyr Zelensky, after an anti-corruption investigation .
The president said that 112 criminal investigations had been launched after an inspection carried out by the Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies, the security services (SBU) and the prosecutor’s office, among others. “There are abuses in various regions. Donetsk, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Odessa, Kiev”, he denounced, asking his commander-in-chief, Valery Zalouzhny, to replace the dismissed officials with veterans of the war started. by Russia. “The system must be steered by people who know that in times of war, cynicism and corruption are treason,” the president said.
One dead and 16 injured in strike on Zaporizhia
Thursday evening, a strike on Zaporijjia, in southern Ukraine, left one dead and 16 injured, according to local authorities. In a press release, the national police said that two Iskander missiles had hit the city, destroying in particular a hotel in which foreign delegations are used to stopping. “I am appalled to learn that a hotel frequently used by UN personnel and our NGO colleagues has been hit in Zaporizhia. This is totally unacceptable,” said Denise Brown, the coordinator of the United Nations in Ukraine, who says he stayed at this hotel.
The Russian army claims to have destroyed a “place of temporary deployment of mercenaries” in Zaporizhia, but in recent weeks it has repeatedly struck places of recreation or rest frequented. At the end of June, a strike on a restaurant popular with soldiers and aid workers left 13 dead in Kramatorsk, in the east. On Tuesday, a group of buildings including cafes, shops and a hotel in Pokrovsk, about forty kilometers from the Eastern Front, was hit, killing nine.
The remains of the Kinjal missile destroyed by the air defense on Friday morning in kyiv fell on two districts of the Ukrainian capital without causing major damage, according to the military administration.
Drone over Moscow
Finally, in Moscow, a Ukrainian drone was destroyed on Friday morning by the Russian air defense above the capital, an incident now almost daily. “The drone was neutralized by means of electronic warfare and crashed in a forest area west of Moscow,” the Russian Defense Ministry said on Telegram, accusing “the Kiev regime”.
It is the third time this week that drones have been shot down over Moscow, as attacks inside Russian territory have multiplied for several weeks, most often without causing major damage or casualties.