“Enemy ‘wave-like’ offensives paid offdespite the huge losses,” said the Russian representative in Zaporizhia, Vladimir Rogov, on his Telegram account. These statements come just after the Ukrainian army managed to retake control of a village in the southern region of Zaporizhia – his first victory on that front since he launched his counteroffensive earlier this month.
Rogov said Ukrainian forces had seized the Pyatykhatky settlement and were entrenching there while coming under Russian artillery fire. He pointed out that the intense fighting had not stopped and that the enemy side was being reduced thanks to the Russian attacks.
Last week, Vladimir Putin defended that Ukraine “had no chance” of success in the counteroffensive. However, kyiv announced in parallel the recovery of some 100 square kilometers of territory in just over seven days, gradually managing to conquer the group of villages east of Donetsk.
[El Kremlin asegura que el objetivo de desmilitarizar Ucrania se ha cumplido “en gran medida”]
The ‘wave-like’ counter-offensive – as defined by Vladimir Rogov – continues in Kherson, where the Ukrainian army has destroyed a “significant” ammunition depot near the Russian-occupied port city of Henichesk, Serhiy Bratchuk reported, spokesman for the military administration of Odessa.
“Our armed forces struck a good blow in the village of Rykove, Henichesk district, in the temporarily occupied territory of the Kherson region,” Bratchuk said in a video message on Sunday morning. “There was a very important ammunition depot. And it was destroyed,” he concluded. Ukrainian media published videos showing a large column of smoke rising on the horizon, accompanied by sounds of explosions.
A huge Russian ammunition depot was hit this morning in Rykove, near the town of Henichesk (Kherson oblast, near the entrance from Ukraine’s mainland to Crimea). It is reported that key railway infrastructure allowing Russian arms deliveries through Crimea could also be hit pic.twitter.com/IqeoevDVzt
— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) June 18, 2023
This attack is located near the Ukrainian entrance to Crimea and could have affected the railway infrastructure that allows Russian arms deliveries between the peninsula and the occupied territory.
The dead rise in Kherson
After 13 days since the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, the death toll continues to climb. With the lowering of the water level, the sunken corpses reappear. So far, according to the Ukrainian authorities, the number of people found dead in the area they still control amounts to 16. While Andrei Alekseyenko, president of the administration installed by Russia in the occupied parts of the Kherson region, said on Telegram that the death toll had risen to 35, according to the Russian agency TASS.
More than 3,600 people have been evacuated from the flooded areas in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, while 31 are still missing and about 1,300 houses are still flooded, the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs notes on its Telegram channel.
Bodies of several civilians in a flooded house in the town of Hola Prystan (Kherson).
Reuters
Ukraine accuses Russia of blowing up the Soviet-era dam, under Russian control since the first days of the invasion in 2022. A team of international legal experts helping Ukraine prosecutors in their investigation said it was “highly likely.” that the collapse in the Ukrainian region of Kherson was caused by explosives planted by the Russians.
However, the Kremlin accuses kyiv of sabotaging the hydroelectric dam to cut off a key water source for Crimea and divert attention from a “hesitant” counteroffensive against Russian forces.
