Ukraine’s navy has acknowledged it struck a coaching floor in occupied Kherson the place Russian troops have been making ready for an assault on Ukraine’s bridgehead at Krynka on the left financial institution of the Dnieper River, the second time this week a strike has killed scores of Russian personnel.
On the identical time, Kyiv denied Russian Protection Minister Sergei Shoigu’s declare that Russian forces had captured the Ukrainian bridgehead at Krynka.
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”There have been a minimum of three strikes on the focus of Russian troops on the coaching floor close to Novaya Kakhovka,” Nataliya Humenyuk, spokeswoman of the Protection Forces of Southern Ukraine, advised RFE/RL on February 22.
”The Russian navy was making ready to storm Krynka, which they claimed that they had already been captured…. In accordance with preliminary knowledge, commanders of the Dnieper group [of Russian forces] have been additionally there. The knowledge continues to be being checked,” Humenyuk stated.
In a separate assertion made to Suspilne, Humenyuk stated a minimum of 60 Russian troopers have been killed within the assault.
Russia has not commented on the strike, which was first reported by each the Ukrainian Telegram channel DeepState and Russian pro-war bloggers that it resulted in heavy losses. A video of the purported assault consisting of three strikes was additionally printed on Telegram channels.
Nevertheless, the knowledge couldn’t be independently verified.
At a assembly with Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 20, Shoigu stated Krynka ”has been cleared,” however Ukraine’s navy stated his assertion was ”a falsification of the info.”
Ukrainian forces in November 2022 liberated Kherson metropolis and the remainder of the area on the suitable financial institution of the Dnieper forcing Russian troops throughout the river. Final yr, Kyiv’s troops managed to additionally set up a small bridgehead on the Dnieper’s left financial institution, which has come below fixed Russian assaults.
The purported Ukrainian strike on Russian forces in Kherson was the second in as many days by which a lot of Russian troops have been reportedly killed.
On February 21, BBC Russian reported {that a} Ukrainian strike on a coaching floor in Moscow-occupied Donetsk had killed a minimum of 60 Russian troops.
In accordance with the report, Russian troopers from the thirty sixth Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade had been lined up and have been ready for the arrival of Main Normal Oleg Moiseyev, commander of the twenty ninth Russian Military, when the strike occurred on February 20.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine has commented on the report. Professional-Russian social media shops posted movies and photographs purportedly exhibiting dozens of uniformed useless our bodies, accusing Moiseyev of creating troopers stand in line ready for his arrival once they have been hit.
Ukrainian Air Pressure spokesman Yuriy Ihnat stated on February 22 that since launching the invasion two yr in the past, Russia has launched greater than 8,000 missiles and 4,630 drones — of which 3,605 have been shot down — at targets inside Ukraine.
In Moscow, former President Dmitry Medvedev boasted that after Ukrainian forces final week withdrew from the japanese metropolis of Avdiyivka following a monthslong bloody battle, Russian troops would hold advancing deeper into Ukraine.
With the warfare nearing its two-year mark amid Ukrainian shortages of manpower, extra superior weapons, and ammunition, Medvedev signaled Moscow might once more try to seize the capital after being pushed again decisively from the outskirts of Kyiv through the preliminary days of the invasion in February 2022.
”The place ought to we cease? I do not know,” Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Safety Council, stated in an interview with Russian media.
”Will or not it’s Kyiv? Sure, it in all probability ought to be Kyiv. If not now, then after a while, perhaps in another section of the event of this battle,” he stated.
Medvedev was as soon as thought-about a reformer in Russia, serving as president to permit Vladimir Putin to be prime minister for 4 years to abide by time period limits earlier than returning to the presidency for a 3rd time in 2012.
However the 56-year-old former lawyer has turn into identified extra lately for his caustic articles, social media posts, and remarks that echo the outlandish type of historic revisionism that Putin has used to vilify the West and underpin the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.