The Russian armed forces again claimed on Friday to have “improved” their positions in northeastern Ukraine, where their offensive prompted local authorities the day before to evacuate civilians.
At the same time, the Russian army on Friday fired four hypersonic Kinjal missiles at western Ukraine, an area rarely targeted by strikes, causing the death of an eight-year-old child in the Ivano-Frankivsk region.
Russian troops had been driven out of the city of Kupiansk and its surroundings, which they had occupied since the start of the conflict, by a Ukrainian lightning counter-attack in September 2022. For the past few weeks, it has been in this area that they returned to the attack, regularly claiming territorial gains.
“In the direction of Kupyansk, the assault units of the Western combat groups […] continued their offensive operations on a broad front and improved the tactical situation,” the Russian Defense Ministry assured in its daily report.
According to him, the Russian forces notably gained ground on Friday near the villages of Olchana and Perchotravnevé, located about fifteen kilometers northeast of Kupyansk, a city of about 25,000 inhabitants before the war.
Faced with this progress, the local authorities ordered Thursday the evacuation of 37 localities surrounding Kupiansk, mainly villages located near the front.
The Ukrainian army, launched since the beginning of June in a difficult counter-offensive which has only enabled it to retake a handful of villages, reported on Thursday a “difficult but controlled” situation in the Kupyansk sector, a formulation commonly used by Kiev during thrusts from its enemy.
Strikes at recreation places
At the same time, Russian drones and missiles continued to target cities and towns on a daily basis, sometimes far inside Ukrainian territory.
Unusually, a strike hit Friday morning the town of Kolomya, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, far from the fighting and rarely targeted. “An eight-year-old boy died,” Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office said on Telegram.
The boy, named Volodymyr, “was in his garden at the time of the strike and received many shards”, told on Telegram the mayor of Kolomya, Bogdan Stanislavsky, referring to a “terrible and very painful loss”, and decreed two days of mourning.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, four hypersonic Kinjal missiles had been fired by Mig-31 bombers from Russian territory towards this region, one having been destroyed over Kiev, the others having hit an airfield and civil infrastructure in Kolomya.
Thursday evening, a strike on Zaporijjia, in the south of Ukraine, left one dead and sixteen injured, according to local authorities.
In a press release, the national police said that two Iskander missiles had hit the city, destroying in particular a hotel in which foreign delegations are used to stopping.
“I am dismayed to learn that a hotel frequently used by UN staff and our NGO colleagues was hit in Zaporizhia. This is completely unacceptable, ”said Denise Brown, the UN coordinator in Ukraine, indignantly, who says she has stayed in this hotel.
The Russian army claims to have destroyed a “place of temporary deployment of mercenaries” in Zaporizhia, but in recent weeks it has repeatedly struck places of leisure or rest frequented.
drone attack
At the end of June, a strike on a restaurant popular with soldiers and aid workers left 13 dead in Kramatorsk, in the east. On Tuesday, a group of buildings including cafes, shops and a hotel in Pokrovsk, about forty kilometers from the Eastern Front, was hit, killing nine.
Debris from the Kinjal missile destroyed by air defense in kyiv on Friday morning fell on two districts of the Ukrainian capital without causing major damage, according to the military administration.
In Moscow, finally, a Ukrainian drone was destroyed Friday morning by the Russian air defense above the capital, an incident now almost daily.
“The drone was neutralized by electronic warfare means and crashed in a forest area west of Moscow,” the Russian Defense Ministry said on Telegram, accusing Kiev.
It is the third time this week that drones have been shot down over Moscow, as attacks inside Russian territory have multiplied for several weeks, most often without causing major damage or casualties.
