Russia claims to have captured new villages in eastern Ukraine. news

Russia claims it has captured two villages in eastern Ukraine, where its forces have been advancing for months, as Ukraine’s president urged allies to pledge to send all weapons to Kiev.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that troops had captured the village of Yantarne in the eastern Donetsk region, about 10 km (six miles) southwest of Kurakhov, a key logistics hub that Moscow claimed to have seized last week. – A day after the Russian army, it also took a new area north-west of Kurakhov.

The Defense Ministry said troops also captured the village of Kalinovye in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

The village is on the west bank of the Oskill River, which long served as the front line between the two armies in the area.

Russian forces had managed to establish a bridgehead on the west bank after crossing the river, a Ukrainian official said Thursday, quoted by the AFP news agency.

Russian forces have spent months attempting to cross the river, which runs through Kupyansk, a city recaptured by Ukraine in a 2022 counteroffensive.

Separately, the Russian Defense Ministry said that over the past 24 hours, Russian forces have attacked Ukrainian military airfields, personnel and vehicles in 139 locations using air force, drones, missiles and artillery.

According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Ukrainian air defense shot down 60 of the 94 drones launched by Russia overnight.

It said 34 drones were “lost”, in reference to Ukraine’s use of electronic warfare to redirect Russian drones.

Falling drone fragments damaged homes in the Kharkiv, Sumy and Poltava regions, but no one was hurt, the Air Force said.

Regional officials said three people were injured by drones in the southern Kherson region on Sunday, and about 23,000 homes were without power after Russian shelling damaged power equipment in the city.

The attack targeted the Dniprovsky district along the Dnipro River, an area of ​​Kherson that is regularly shelled by Russian forces on the opposite bank.

Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said Russian forces had shelled about 50 settlements in the city of Kherson and the surrounding area in the past 24 hours.

“The Russian military specifically shelled the social infrastructure and residential areas of the region’s settlements, causing damage to two multi-storey buildings and eight private houses,” Prokudin said on Telegram.

In the Russian-controlled part of the Kherson region, a Ukrainian drone struck a car, killing a 76-year-old woman outside her home, Russian-controlled governor Vladimir Saldo said on Telegram.

Zelensky appeals to allies

In a statement on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on allies to honor all promises to supply arms to Ukraine, including promises to counter Russian air strikes.

Zelensky said that in the past week, the Russian military had carried out hundreds of strikes on Ukraine and that about 700 aerial bombs and more than 600 attack drones had been used.

“Every week, the Russian war continues only because the Russian military retains its ability to terrorize Ukraine and exploit its superiority in the sky,” Zelensky said on the Telegram messaging app.

“The decisions taken at the NATO summit in Washington, as well as those adopted during the Ramstein meetings regarding air defense for Ukraine, are still not fully implemented,” Zelensky said.

Ukraine’s leader said this week he has discussed with partners and the United States the possibility of granting Ukraine a license to produce air defense systems and missiles.

task force for oil spill

Meanwhile, Russian officials said an emergency task force arrived in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region on Sunday as oil leaks from two storm-hit tankers in the Kerch Strait continued to spread, a month after they were first detected.

The task force, which includes Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov, was set up after Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday asked authorities to speed up the response to the leak, calling it “the worst crisis we have faced in recent years.” One of the most serious environmental challenges.” ,

Kurenkov said the “most difficult situation” has developed near the port of Taman in the Krasnodar Territory, where fuel oil continues to leak into the sea from a damaged part of the Volgoneft-239 tanker.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Kurenkov as saying that the remaining oil would be pumped out of the tanker’s stern.

In response to Putin’s call for action, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhiy Tykhyi accused Russia of having “begun to demonstrate its so-called ‘concern’ only when the scale of the disaster became so obvious as to hide its dire consequences.” Wasn’t possible”.

“Russia’s first ignoring the problem, then admitting its inability to solve it, and ultimately leaving the entire Black Sea region alone to suffer the consequences is further evidence of its international irresponsibility,” Tikhi said on Friday.

The Kerch Strait is an important global shipping route, providing passage from the inland Sea of ​​Azov to the Black Sea. It has also been a major point of conflict between Russia and Ukraine after Moscow annexed the peninsula in 2014.

In 2016, Ukraine took Moscow to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, where it accused Russia of illegally trying to gain control over the territory. In 2021, Russia closed the strait for several months.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky’s office, described the oil spill last month as a “large-scale environmental disaster” and called for additional sanctions on Russian tankers.