The Ukrainian military rejected attempts at Russian advances in eastern Ukraine and bombed critical Russian logistics centers on Saturday night as Russia continued to bomb cities along the 400-mile front line.
Ukraine has made modest but steady advances in the southern region of Kherson, a port city where thousands of Russian infantrymen are now largely isolated after Ukrainians move on routes of primary origin.
A senior U. S. Department of Defense officialdeclared progress at a news conference on Friday and said evidence was developing that heavy Russian casualties had left some outfits ill-prepared for combat.
The official described Russia’s recent efforts as a failure on the battlefield and at home, where Moscow’s rhetoric about its ambitions in Ukraine has become more explosive in recent days.
Senior Kremlin officials spoke of replacing the regime in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, on his Telegram channel, showed a map depicting a Ukraine engulfed by Russia and its neighbors.
Although Russian forces are seeking to penetrate deeper into the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, they have been unable to break through Ukrainian defenses, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.
“Throughout the month of July, the occupiers tried to raze the Donetsk region,” Serhiy Haidai, head of the army administration of neighboring Luhansk province, said in a statement. Simply using its giant artillery merit to flatten spaces before advancing, Haidai said the destruction of Russian ammunition depots by the Ukrainians “has made it much more difficult for them to fill the stockpiles of weapons and manpower. “
However, he said, Russian forces continued to “destroy settlements, cannons and jet artillery. “At least six civilians were killed and 15 others wounded by Russian shelling in the Donetsk region on Friday, local Ukrainian officials said.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk warned on Saturday that the Ukrainian-controlled parts of Donetsk will face severe warming this winter due to the destruction of fuel pipelines. He called for a mandatory evacuation of citizens before blood loss begins.
Elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, Russian rockets hit Kharkiv and a bus station in Sloviansk, among other attacks.
On the southern front, at least one civilian from the port city of Mykolaiv was killed when a Russian missile hit a high-rise construction overnight, according to Vitaliy Kim, the local governor.
Residents of Nikopol, a town across the Dnieper River from Russian-controlled territory surrounding the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, resisted the night of extensive shelling. The attack affected more than a dozen homes and caused a widespread blackout, according to local officials.
The Ukrainians accused the Russians that the nuclear force plant was a military base, assuming that the Ukrainians would not fire on it because of the dangers involved. But Ukrainian officials said Saturday that their country’s military attacked Russian positions in the city where the factory is located, Enerhodar. .
“It was hot in Enerhodar, literally,” the city’s exiled mayor, Dmytro Orlov, said in a statement. He said three Russian army equipment, stationed in front of a local hotel, had been destroyed.
As the Russians worked to fix a major bridge over the Dnieper River further south near the town of Kherson, the Ukrainians said it remained impassable and that Russian forces based on the west bank of the river were largely far from resupply and support. .
RED CROSS BAR
Ukrainian and Russian officials on Saturday blamed themselves for the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian war criminals in an attack on a criminal in a separatist-controlled domain. The International Red Cross called on the criminal to ensure that the dozens of wounded war criminals gained correct treatment, but said their request had not been granted so far.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Red Cross and the United Nations have a duty to respond to the bombing of the compound in Ukraine’s Donetsk province, and again called for Russia to be declared a terrorist state.
“Condemnation at the point of political rhetoric is enough for this mass murder,” he said.
The separatist government and Russian officials said Friday’s attack killed 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war and wounded 75 others. The Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday released a list naming 48 Ukrainian fighters, elderly between the ages of 20 and 62, who were killed in the attack. he had reviewed his death toll.
Ukraine and Russia alleged that the attack on the criminal was premeditated and was intended to silence Ukrainian criminals and destroy evidence.
The International Red Cross, which organized the evacuations of civilians and worked to monitor the treatment of war criminals held in Russia and Ukraine, said it had asked for access to the criminal “to determine the fitness and condition of all those who were present at the time of death. “the attack. “
“Our priority at this time is that the injured get vital care and that the bodies of those who lost their lives are treated with dignity,” the Red Cross said.
But the organization said Saturday that its application for the criminal had not yet been granted.
“Allowing the ICRC to hold prisoners of war is a legal responsibility of the parties to the conflict under the Geneva Conventions,” the International Red Cross wrote on Twitter.
Russia claimed that the Ukrainian military used precision rocket launchers across the United States to attack the Olenivka prison, an agreement controlled through the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.
The Ukrainian military accused the Russians of bombing the country to cover up allegations of torture and execution of Ukrainians.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said the conflicting claims and limited data made it highly unlikely that he would fulfill the full duty of the attack, but “the visual evidence we have appears to be more for the Ukrainian claim than for the Russian one. “one. “
Moscow has opened an investigation into the attack and the UN said it is also in a position to send investigators. the parties, and we completely the initiatives” of the Red Cross.
The criminal attack reportedly killed Ukrainian infantrymen captured in May after the fall of Mariupol, a Black Sea port city where troops and the National Guard’s Azov regiment withstood a months-long Russian siege.
On Saturday, a group of parents of black-clad Azov fighters demonstrated outdoors at Kyiv’s St. Sophia Cathedral and demanded that Russia be designated as a terrorist state for violating Geneva Convention rules on reparations for prisoners of war.
IRC VIDEO
Meanwhile, Amnesty International and the European Union have subsidized Kyiv by calling for an investigation into images circulating online that appear to show pro-Russian forces castrating and executing a captive Ukrainian fighter.
Ukraine vowed to identify the perpetrators after a series of horrific videos recently appeared on pro-Russian Telegram channels showing an organization of men, one of whom wore pro-Russian symbols, castrating and executing a prisoner dressed in military uniform with the insignia of the Ukrainian army.
“This horrific attack is another obvious example of the overall defence of life and human dignity in Ukraine by Russian forces,” Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said on Friday.
In a video of about 90 seconds, a guy dressed in military uniform, dressed in a “Z” shaped shield and an orange and black ribbon related to Russian forces, castrated the prisoner tied with a green application knife.
A separate video shared on pro-Russian Telegram channels shows a single shot in the prisoner’s head.
The Washington Post could not verify when or where the videos were filmed.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak described the men in the photographs as Russian “propagandists” who revel in torture.
“But the fog of war will not witness the punishment of the executioners,” he tweeted. “We will identify and succeed in one and one and both. “
The Post could not identify the captive in the footage.
The EU’s most sensible diplomat called the photographs an example of “inhumane and barbaric acts” that constitute war crimes.
“Evidence in the form of gruesome video footage widely shared today on pro-Kremlin social media, in which Russian infantrymen commit a heinous atrocity against a Ukrainian prisoner of war,” Borrell said Friday. “The European Union condemns in the strongest terms the atrocities committed through the Russian armed forces and their proxies. “
There has been no comment from Moscow on the allegations.
Amnesty said the London-based human rights organization documented crimes under foreign law during Russia’s war on Ukraine, adding abstract killings of captives of Russian-backed separatists and extrajudicial executions of Ukrainian civilians through Russian forces.
Information for this article provided through Marc Santora of the New York Times, Susie Blann of the Associated Press, and Dalton Bennett and Ellen Francis of the Washington Post.
Gallery: Images of Ukraine, month 6