Russia attacks Mikolaiv for the second time in three days and prepares a major offensive in southern Ukraine

“Ukraine has withstood Russia’s brutal attacks. We have already managed to liberate part of the territory occupied after February 24. Little by little we will liberate other areas of our country that are currently under occupation,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

This weekend, Ukrainian military sources revealed that they expect to soon receive two batteries of NASAMS anti-aircraft defense systems, for the handling of which the Ukrainian military is already being trained.

NASAMS are Norwegian-made anti-aircraft systems capable of hitting targets within a 25-kilometre radius. Ukraine also receives US HIMARS and British M270 systems from its Western partners.

Precisely the HIMARS, according to the Defense Minister, Oleksiy Reznikovhave made it possible to change the course of the fighting in favor of kyiv.

In addition, by the end of 2022 kyiv expects the arrival of modern German IRIS-T anti-aircraft systems.

Russia warns of Crimea

But none of this equipment can be used against Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, Russia warns.

“The consequences (of the eventual attack on the peninsula) are obvious. If something similar happens, the day of reckoning will soon come for all of them. It will be very fast and very hard,” the former Russian president said today. Dmitry Medvedevcurrent vice president of the country’s Security Council.

In a speech, collected by the agency RIA NovostiMedvedev assured that the objectives of the Russian military campaign, which began last February, “will be met.”

“You can be sure that the objectives of this operation will be fulfilled. They are related to the elimination … of the existing threats to our country,” he said.

Russian senator Andrei Klishas previously called for the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of all of Ukraine over threats by the Ukrainian authorities to attack Crimea.

“The threats (…) to attack Crimea or the port of Crimea prove that we must denazify and demilitarize all of Ukrainebecause otherwise there will always be a threat to our territory, our citizens and our infrastructure,” Klishas wrote on Telegram.

Sources from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry did not previously rule out the possibility of using the HIMARS, which kyiv began receiving in June, to attack military targets in Crimea.

They may be hit, in particular, the sites of Russian Kalibr missiles, which are often fired from the peninsula, according to the Ukrainian military.

Also the Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych He said the day before that the Crimean bridge, whose construction Russia completed in 2019, could become the target of an attack as soon as kyiv has such a “technical possibility”.

kyiv does not give up Lugansk

The Ukrainian army assured this Sunday that it still maintains control of two villages located in the eastern region of Lugansk, which the Russians claim to have taken completely, according to the head of the Regional Military Administration, Serhiy Gaidai, on his website. Facebook.

“This (situation) is exactly what is driving the Russians crazyas they were ordered to reach (and occupy) as far as the administrative borders of the Lugansk region (to control them),” Gaidai said.

At the same time, fighting continues in the neighboring Donetsk region, where the intensity of hostilities has gradually increased in recent days, according to kyiv and pro-Russian militias, who link the increased bombing of the region’s capital with the arrival of Western weapons to Ukraine.

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the country’s troops managed to repel the assault actions of the enemy near Ivano-Darivka, as well as Russia’s attempt to advance towards Verkhniokamianka in the direction of Sloviansk, a strategic enclave in Donetsk. .

In the direction of the Sloviansk area, “the enemy used mortars, cannons and artillery rockets to open fire near settlements such as Dibrovne, Mykilske, Podolivka, Mazanivka, Adamivka, Chepil, Krasnopillia and Kurulka,” the military report said.

On Saturday, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Russian troops launched 22 unguided missile and MLRS attacks on the Donetsk regionwhich left civilians dead and injured and 49 buildings destroyed.

The Russians also continue to launch sporadic attacks in the southern regions over which they already have much control: Zaporizhia, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, and Kherson, where Ukrainian forces have carried out several counter-attacks in recent weeks.