Russia takes control of eastern Pesky and attacks Kramatorsk

First modification: 08/13/2022 – 18:55

This Saturday, August 13, the Russian Defense Ministry reported important progress in the combat focused on eastern Ukraine. According to the military spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, the Army took control of the town of Pesky.

“As a result of offensive actions by the allied troops, the town of Pesky in the Donetsk People’s Republic was completely liberated,” he said in the daily report. He also detailed that they hit an enemy Himars missile launcher near Kramatorsk.

Regarding the fall of Pesky, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry neither confirmed nor denied the Russian version. The latest information issued was that fighting continued in the area.

The eastern Ukrainian town was one of the points where kyiv launched counter-offensives against Donetsk, according to Moscow.

However, the advances did not stop there. Shelling was reported again in Kramatorsk, leaving three dead and 15 wounded, Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko confirmed in a Facebook post. “The shelling has damaged at least 20 buildings and a fire has broken out,” he added.

In Zaporizhia, where Europe’s largest nuclear plant is located, the pro-Russian and Ukrainian authorities again accused each other of carrying out attacks that carry the risk of nuclear disaster. Vladimir Rogov, a spokesman for the pro-Russian administration in the city, said they were “again under fire from Volodymyr Zelensky’s fighters.”

They warned that they had to turn off the turbines of the Kajovskaya hydroelectric plant, something that can have negative repercussions on the operation of nuclear facilities.

Russia warns the United States

Alexander Darchiev, director of the Department for North America of the Russian Foreign Ministry, was in charge of reacting to the proposal for a bill presented in the United States House of Representatives, where Russia can be declared a State sponsor of terrorism.

“If the legislative initiative is approved, it would mean that Washington would cross the point of no return, with serious collateral damage to bilateral diplomatic relations,” the official warned.

However, he quickly sought to lower the tenor of the warning, stressing that he does not intend to enter into “hypothetical speculations about what is possible and what is not in the current turbulent situation.”

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This measure that is being studied in the North American country was approved last Thursday in the Latvian Parliament, where they considered that Moscow’s actions formed a “genocide.”

Riga stated that the Putin government “uses suffering and intimidation as a tool in its attempts to demoralize the Ukrainian people and armed forces.”

In this regard, the Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the Latvian attitude, which it called “another manifestation of Russophobia” and that “violates the principle of sovereign equality.” Finally, he regretted that the accusation comes from a country that “is far from meeting international standards” on the financing of terrorism and corruption.

Zelensky complained to the European Union about Schengen visas

The Ukrainian president issued a message Friday night urging the community club to ban visas for Russian citizens to prevent it from becoming a “supermarket” for tycoons.

Clarifying that the proposal did not cover citizens who need help to leave Russia for opposing the Putin regime, Zelensky asserted that “there must be guarantees that Russian murderers or accomplices of state terrorism do not use Schengen visas,” a type of document that gives access to the Schengen Area without borders that involves several European states.

“Europe must not become a supermarket where it does not matter who enters and where the main thing is that people simply stop by for their products,” he concluded.

With EFE, Reuters and AFP