Moscow/Lviv, Aug 2 (EFE) .- Ukraine today began the mandatory evacuation of the population from the areas it controls in the Donetsk region, to prevent the upsurge in fighting on that eastern front, while trying to boost an offensive in the South of the country.
“Mandatory evacuation of the Donetsk region has begun. The first train arrived at Kropyvnytskyi this morning. Women, children, the elderly, many people with reduced mobility. Everyone was welcomed and accommodated, everyone was helped,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereschuk wrote on Telegram.
Vereschuk, also head of the Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories, accompanied his entry with photos of evacuees boarding a train.
UKRAINE RECEIVES NEW US MILITARY AID PACKAGE
The evacuation began the day after the announcement of a new US military aid package amounting to 550 million dollars, which includes 75,000 shells for 155-millimeter howitzers and rockets for HIMARS launchers.
In addition, this Monday the Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Oleksyi Reznikov, reported the arrival in the country of multiple German MARS II rocket launchers.
According to the Ukrainian military command, artillery and long-range rockets are the key to cutting the supply lines of the Russian troops, a preliminary step to a counteroffensive, especially in the Kherson region, in southern Crimea.
The Ukrainian military expert Oleg Zhdanov prefers to speak of “counter-attack actions”, because, as he states on his YouTube channel, a counter-offensive requires a superiority in artillery and troops that the Ukrainian Army does not currently have.
kyiv REPORTS ON PROGRESS IN KHERSON REGION
However, the Kyiv government reports almost daily progress in the Kherson region.
“To date, the release of 53 locations has been confirmed. We give this information only when it has been corroborated by the General Staff,” said the deputy head of the military administration of the Kherson region, Dmitro Butryi.
He added that all the territory from which the Russian troops have been expelled is permanently subjected to enemy fire, so people have been advised not to return to their homes.
“The risk to their lives is very great,” Butryi warned in an intervention on the television marathon about the situation on the battlefronts.
According to the head of the President’s Office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the total number of liberated towns now amounts to 1,054 throughout the country.
RUSSIAN TROOPS ATTACK IN THE NORTHEAST AND SOUTH
While the Ukrainian military highlighted its advances in the south, Russia assured that in the Kharkov region, in northeastern Ukraine, its forces caused “up to 500 deaths” to the 92nd mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The attacks were carried out in the towns of Merefa and Chuguév, said the spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, General Igor Konashénkov, who specified that high-precision weapons were used in them.
In the south, in the Mykolaiv region, Russia hit a makeshift base of the Foreign Legion fighting in Ukraine, he added.
As a consequence of this attack, “up to 250 mercenaries were killed and 20 military equipment was destroyed.”
Konashenkov also reported the destruction of seven weapons caches in the Donetsk region and two in Zaporizhia and Mykolaiv.
RUSSIA ACCUSES THE US OF BEING INVOLVED IN THE CONFLICT
In addition, the Russian general accused the United States of being “directly involved” in the fighting in neighboring Ukraine by allegedly coordinating missile attacks by the Ukrainian Army.
In this sense, he highlighted the statements to the British press by the deputy head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Vadym Skibitsky, that kyiv and Washington agree on the operations of the HIMARS mobile rocket launchers.
“All of this irrefutably confirms that Washington, despite statements from the White House and the Pentagon, is directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine,” he said.
The Defense spokesman stressed that “the (Joe) Biden Administration is directly responsible for all the missile attacks against residential neighborhoods and the civil infrastructure of the cities of Donbas and other regions, which have caused the mass death of civilians” .
Skivitsky denied that the US indicates the targets to hit, but did not rule out that both countries exchange information before each attack.
