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Ukraine said on Friday that a Russian offensive was putting more pressure on the strategic eastern logistics hub of Pokrovsk, with waves of guided bombs and infantry advances leading to Moscow’s biggest territorial advance since the spring.
The move has led to a surge in the number of civilians fleeing, with evacuation requests from the area increasing about tenfold in the past two weeks, according to a volunteer helping people evacuate.
Russian troops have been advancing steadily on several fronts in the eastern Donetsk region, launching particularly fierce attacks around Pokrovsk, stretching Kiev’s military forces 29 months since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Blackbird Group analyst Pasi Paroinen told Reuters that Russia had seized about 57 square kilometers of land in a week, the third-largest occupation since April and only a slight increase in June.
Ruslan Muzychuk, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Guard, said in a televised address that Russian forces were using warplanes and artillery fire to support an infantry offensive in the area around Pokrovsk.
“These attacks are not always supported by armored vehicles, usually they are infantry attacks,” he said, noting that bombings by Russian warplanes were a particular problem.
“This is a significant threat… because the Pokrovsk and Toretsk Fronts bear the bulk of the daily air strikes on Ukrainian defenders’ positions.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its troops had captured five settlements in the Donetsk region over the past week.
Valery Romanenko, a Kiev-based aviation expert, said Russia’s use of warplanes to launch guided bombs was crucial to Moscow’s battlefield tactics, and he likened it to a “conveyor belt.”
“The Russians are not breaking through our defenses, they are pushing them back. Every day they are advancing 100 meters, 150 meters, 200 meters using this tactic: drop guided bombs, then do a ‘physical attack,’ (if) pushed back, drop guided bombs again, do a ‘physical attack’ again.”
He said that situation could be broken if the United States provided Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets that could threaten Russian warplanes, but such an action was unlikely at present because it could put new pilots flying the expensive aircraft at risk.
Paroinen said the Russian offensive launched in late June around the settlements of Toretsk and Nieuwyok and around the villages of Ocheretny and Prokhres east of Pokrovsk had created a “double crisis” for Ukraine.
He said that previously, Russia had attacked the northeastern Kharkiv region, and although it was blocked by Ukraine, it opened up a new front and dispersed the defenders’ forces.
‘They are destroying everything’
Roman Buhayov, an evacuee driver for humanitarian group Vostok SOS, told Reuters the number of evacuation requests from the region had increased about tenfold in the past two weeks.
On Friday, he drove a bus to evacuate residents of Novorodivka, a town near Pokrovsk with a pre-war population of about 14,000. Now, the town is about 10 kilometers from the front line, which is getting closer every day.
Antonina Kalashnikova, 62, and her disabled son Denys, 34, fled their devastated home on Buhayov’s bus to Pokrovsk, where she spoke to Reuters.
They arrived in town with their neighbors, leaving behind only a few shopping bags, and continued on to the southern city of Nikolayev.
“They started bombing hard and it became extremely scary. We didn’t sleep all night and decided to leave,” Kalashnikova said. “They were destroying everything.”
Read more by Euractiv
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