Army Chief Olexander Syrskyj had reported to him about “the advance of the war into the territory of the aggressor,” Zelenskyj said in his evening video address. Ukraine is thus proving “that it is really capable (…) of building up exactly the pressure that is needed – pressure on the aggressor.”
Neither Zelensky nor the military in Kyiv provided any further details about the current status of the Ukrainian troops’ advance into Russian territory. In recent days, Zelensky had only made indirect allusions to the attack in the direction of Kursk.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian naval forces say they have killed around 40 Russian soldiers in an attack on a gas production tower in the Black Sea. Naval and military intelligence forces attacked the site where the enemy had assembled personnel and equipment, Ukrainian media reported. The occupiers wanted to use the tower to jam satellite navigation signals, which would have endangered civilian shipping.
“We cannot allow such a thing”
“We cannot allow something like this to happen,” Dmytro Pletenchuk told the online newspaper “Ukrainska Pravda.” There were no civilians on the gas production platform, which is out of service, it was said. The missile and artillery units of the coastal forces carried out the attack. A published video showed a heavy explosion. The authenticity of the footage could not be independently verified. It was not the first operation of this kind, Pletenchuk said. The enemy had used the tower in the past, for example to disrupt the navigation of grain freighters. The naval officer stressed that the decision to attack was made for the safety of civilian shipping.
Ukraine has been defending itself against the Russian war of aggression for almost two and a half years. The country’s navy has repeatedly sunk Russian ships in the Black Sea and destroyed other enemy targets.
20,000 people have to be evacuated
Meanwhile, according to Ukrainian sources, a total of three people were killed in Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine. According to regional governor Vadym Filashkin, a civilian died in a rocket attack on a critical infrastructure building in Kramatorsk. Two people were killed in an attack on a private house in the Kharkiv region, police said.
Meanwhile, volunteers are helping to evacuate villagers in the border region of Sumy. According to local governor Volodymyr Artiukh on Saturday morning, 28 villages in a ten-kilometer zone along the border with Russia are being evacuated. According to Ukrainian police, 20,000 people have to leave their homes in the northern region.
In view of the heavy fighting as the Ukrainian armed forces advanced into Russian territory, the regional civil defense has already evacuated tens of thousands of people. Around 76,000 civilians have already been evacuated from the border area and accommodated in other regions of Russia, the civil defense said, according to the state agency Tass.
No information on the fighting
Neither the Russian nor the Ukrainian side provided any information about the actual fighting. Ukrainian intelligence only reported that Russia had begun moving a brigade of marines from the occupied Crimean peninsula to the Kursk region. Part of the vehicle convoy had already been destroyed on the way there. The information could not be independently verified.
A missile alert was sounded throughout the Kursk region. Acting Governor Alexei Smirnov warned of the potential dangers on the Telegram platform and called on the population to seek shelter if possible.
According to the Russian authorities so far, five people were killed and 55 others injured in the fighting in Kursk. Thousands of people have been evacuated from the region. Russian military bloggers reported that the Ukrainian army captured Russian soldiers during its advance. In his daily address on Friday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked his soldiers for the “exchange reserve”. He was referring to possible future agreements on the exchange of prisoners with Russia.
Fewer fightings since June 10
According to the Ukrainian army, there were fewer “fights” on the other fronts on Ukrainian territory on Saturday than at any time since June 10. Observers interpreted Ukraine’s unprecedented advance as an attempt to tie down Russian forces and thus relieve pressure on other fronts.
According to the Russian state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom, the Kursk nuclear power plant is operating normally. However, it has been decided to reduce the number of workers building a new plant in the region due to the state of emergency. According to the Russian news agency RIA, Rosatom boss Alexei Likhachev spoke by phone with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, about the situation at the nuclear power plant in the border region with Ukraine.
