In their efforts to drive back Russian troops, Kyiv officials said that the Ukrainian military destroyed a Russian arms depot in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region launching artillery barrages.
The statement also said that Ukraine forces have carried out a special operation to free military captives in the region in southern Ukraine, which is currently under Russian control, a territory Kyiv is planning to retake in a counteroffensive using hundreds of thousands of troops.
The officials said the strikes in the town of Nova Kakhovka destroyed artillery, armored vehicles, and a warehouse with ammunition, and killed 52 Russians. A massive crater can be seen on satellite images following the strike.
But local authorities in the occupied Kherson region accused them of damaging civilian infrastructure and killing at least seven people, including civilians, and wounding at least 60 more.
The head of Moscow’s civilian-military administration in the Kherson region, Vladimir Leontiev, said on Telegram that the strikes have hit warehouses, shops, a pharmacy, petrol stations, and even a church.
Leontiev added that there are still many people under the rubble and that many people are blocked in their houses and apartments.
Ukrainian forces have reportedly used US-supplied long-range, precision artillery systems in the strikes on Nova Kakhovka, something the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also bragged with later in the day, stressing that the occupiers will not have a safe rear anywhere on Ukrainian land.
Meanwhile, Russian forces allegedly shot down three Ukrainian military jets: a Soviet-era Su-25 and Su-24 over the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine and a Mig-29, another Soviet-designed fighter aircraft, in the Mykolaiv region of southern Ukraine, the Russian defense ministry said on Wednesday.
According to the Ukrainian military, Russian forces also carried out airstrikes and an intense shelling campaign targeting Bakhmut and Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region overnight. Early reports suggest no fatalities, but authorities are still assessing the situation since residential buildings and public infrastructure were hit.