The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army pointed out, for its part, that the Russian troops are focused on the defense of the occupied territories and are concentrating forces at some points on the front to undertake offensive actions.
Ukrainian troops claim to have taken the initiative in the eastern Lugansk region, where they have liberated 12 towns and are repelling Russian attacks.
This comes as Russia moves more troops to this province and neighboring Donetsk in preparation for the next big battle in Donbas.
“There are already 12 towns (in Lugansk) under the Ukrainian flag,” Sergey Cherevaty, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said on local television.
According to the source, in Lugansk “the enemy suffers defeats.”
The next target, the Donbas
In particular, according to the Ukrainian military, the Russians continue to attack in the direction of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region, and defend themselves in Zaporizhia.
For their part, the pro-Russian authorities in Zaporizhia denounced a concentration of Ukrainian troops in the area and Ukrainian plans to attack in the south.
According to the pro-Russian politician Vladimir Rogov, the Ukrainian Army is preparing an offensive towards the cities of Berdiansk and Melitopol, with units that it transfers from Kherson, where Ukraine recently recovered part of the region of the same name.
Kiev also ensures that Moscow relocates troops previously deployed from Jershon.
In the opinion of the Ukrainian General Staff, the Russian military is moving to Donbas, where, according to experts, the next big battle between the two sides will be fought.
And it is that both kyiv and Moscow have been highlighting the intensification of enemy attacks in the region for days, where Russia has almost total control over Lugansk, but not Donetsk.
Heavy fighting between Russia and Ukraine
It is precisely in Lugansk that the fiercest battles are fought as Ukrainian troops try to retake territories lost during the spring.
This was reported, in particular, by the Ukrainian governor of Lugansk, Serhiy Gaidai, who assured that despite difficult fighting, Ukrainian soldiers are approaching large cities in the region, such as Rubizhne or Kreminna.
British intelligence also confirmed today the intensification of fighting in Lugansk.
“For the past seven days, intense artillery exchanges have continued around Svatove, in the Lugansk region, in north-eastern Ukraine,” the report said.
According to British intelligence, holding Svatove, a major population center in the Luhansk region, is a “political priority” for the Russian leadership.
The Washington Post newspaper highlighted, in turn, the presence of “Russian special forces groups” in Svatove, which are mixed with troops made up of recently mobilized soldiers.
The elite soldiers, according to the newspaper, repel the Ukrainian offensive attempts with the support of reconnaissance drones and the experience acquired in previous combats.
At the same time, according to the outlet, Moscow is not in a position now to take the initiative on the front.
Zaporizhia under fire once more
On the other hand, Russia and Ukraine returned to exchange accusations of attacks once morest the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, located in the Ukrainian region of Zaporizhia, which once more ignited alarms in the international community regarding the security of this atomic infrastructure.
Thus, the CEO of the Russian state atomic energy company, Rosatom, Alexéi Lijachev, warned today of the risk of a nuclear disaster at the plant, under the control of Russian troops since last March, following the new bombings on the weekend. .
“We are informing the international community that the plant is at risk of a nuclear disaster and kyiv clearly believes that a small nuclear incident would be acceptable,” Likhachev was quoted as saying by the official TASS news agency.
Ukraine’s nuclear agency, Energoatom, in turn pointed to Russian troops as responsible for the attacks.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) denounced yesterday, Sunday, bombardments with impacts very close to the nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.
The director general of the IAEA, Mariano Grossi, pointed out that both on Saturday night and on Sunday morning there were “strong explosions” in the vicinity of the largest atomic plant in Europe.
“We were lucky that a potentially serious nuclear incident did not occur. Next time, we may not be so lucky,” she warned.
