KYIV (AP) — Russia announced Wednesday that its forces had seized a key hilltop district, the eastern Ukraine city of Shasiv Yar near Bakhmut, which Moscow has been pressing for months. Moscow’s claim comes just after Kyiv said Russian measures in the commercial city of Dnipro killed five other people and wounded about three dozen more, including a 14-year-old girl.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its troops had “liberated” the Novy district in Chasiv Yar, but it is unclear whether it claimed its forces had crossed a canal that passes through the eastern component of the city.
The capture of Chasiv Yar, a popular military center that once housed about 12,000 more people, would pave the way for a Russian advance toward the last Ukrainian-controlled civilian centers in the Donetsk region.
Russia’s capture of the district was also reported through the army blog DeepState, which has ties to the Ukrainian military. He said the domain had been flattened by Russian shelling and that withdrawal was “a logical, albeit difficult, decision. “
There was no quick reaction from the Kiev authorities.
CBS News senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata was in Chasiv Yar in February, for the second time in a matter of months, and even then found that the city was devastated by gunfire. artillery and defended itself through exhausted Ukrainian troops, who were calling for help. On a bombed-out building, someone had spray-painted a message: “We don’t ask for too much, we just want artillery and aviation shells; the rest we will do ourselves. “
It is written in English. The Ukrainian forces knew exactly where to aim their bullets and their words.
“We are counting on our American partners to provide us with weapons so that our men do not have to sacrifice their lives,” Reuben Sarukhanian, a soldier with Ukraine’s 5th Assault Brigade, told D’Agata at the time.
Since then, the United States government has paid more attention to Ukraine’s war effort, adding an aid package announced Wednesday through Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken said the $150 million program legal through President Biden, the seventh since the president signed a massive and long-delayed foreign aid bill in late April, included missiles for air defense systems, artillery shells, mortars, anti-tank missiles and a wide range of missiles. A variety of other weapons and equipment.
Blinken said the materials would “help strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses against Russian attacks and strengthen Ukraine’s roles on the front lines,” and while he did not provide an express timeline, he said the United States would “provide this new assistance as temporarily as imaginable to strengthen Ukraine’s defense. “defense. ” of its territory and its inhabitants.
Blinken’s announcement came hours after Russia’s attack on the Dnipro prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to again call on his Western partners to bolster his country’s air defenses and supply more long-range weapons to thwart Russian attacks.
“So far, five other people have died. My deepest condolences to the families and friends. Thirty-four other people have been injured, plus a child,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post.
Russian forces have been targeting Dnipro and the surrounding region since they introduced their full-scale invasion two and a half years ago.
Regional governor Sergiy Lysak called the attack “cruel” and said a 14-year-old woman was among the wounded. An amateur video of the attack published through Ukrainian media shows a huge column of black smoke emerging over the city and drivers running from the scene.
Ukraine’s air force said its air defense systems shot down six drones and five of seven missiles targeting the region, most commonly Dnipro.
“The global can protect lives, and that requires the determination of leaders, a determination that can and will have to make protecting oneself from terrorism the norm again,” Zelenksyy said in his online message.
Before the war, Dnipro had about a million inhabitants and is about a hundred kilometers from the closest point of the southern front line.
More than 40 more people were killed in a Russian attack on Dnipro in January 2023, in one of the worst aerial bombardments ever carried out by Russian forces.
Separately, in the eastern regions of Ukraine, Donetsk and Kharkiv, two civilians were killed in overnight Russian attacks.