Ukraine has said it has launched a long-range rocket attack against Russian forces and military equipment in southern Ukraine, territory it says it plans to retake in a counteroffensive using hundreds of thousands of troops. The strike hit an ammunition dump in the town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region, killing 52 Russians, Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday. It came after Washington supplied Ukraine with advanced high-mobility artillery missile systems (HIMARS), which Kyiv says its forces are using with increasing effectiveness. A Russian official in Kherson gave a different version of events. Russia’s TASS news agency reported that at least seven people were killed and that civilians and civilian infrastructure were hit. Reuters could not independently verify accounts on the battlefield. The territory hit by Ukraine is what Russia seized after launching a full-scale invasion on February 24 – what Moscow called a “special military operation”. The region is strategically important, with access to the Black Sea, a once-thriving agricultural industry and a location just north of Russian-annexed Crimea. Ukrainian government officials have spoken of efforts to muster up to a million troops and their goal of retaking southern parts of the country now under Russian control. “Based on the results of our missile and artillery units, the enemy lost 5️2 [people]one Msta-B howitzer, one mortar and seven armored and other vehicles, as well as an ammunition depot in Nova Kahovka,” Ukraine’s southern military command said in a statement. Unverified videos posted on social media showed smoke and sparks, followed by a huge fireball shooting into the night sky. Images released by Russian state media showed a wasteland covered in rubble and the ruins of buildings. A local administration official based in Russia said Ukraine had used HIMARS missiles and destroyed warehouses containing salts, a chemical compound that can be used to make fertilizers or gunpowder. There was a big explosion. Vladimir Leontiev, the head of the military-civilian administration of the Kakhovka region settled in Russia, was quoted by Russia’s TASS news agency as saying that at least seven people were killed in the attack and around 60 were injured. “There are still many people under the rubble. The injured are being taken to the hospital, but many people are trapped in their apartments and houses,” Leontiev said, according to TASS. Warehouses, shops, a pharmacy, gas stations and a church were also reported to have been hit.
Counterattack plans
On Sunday, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister urged civilians in Kherson to evacuate as Kiev’s armed forces prepared a counterattack. Ukraine itself is bracing for what it expects to be a massive new Russian offensive in the country’s east, where Moscow says it is determined to take control of the entire Donbas industrial region. Russian forces, which earlier this month completed the seizure of Luhansk province in the Donbass, have been shelling parts of neighboring Donetsk province for weeks. Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko said there was a significant build-up of Russian troops, particularly in the Bakhmut and Shiversky regions, and around Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. The entire front line in the area was under constant shelling as Russian troops tried to break through but were pushed back, he said. TASS reported separately that Russian and Russian-backed forces surrounded the city of Shiversk. Other locations in Ukraine were also attacked. At least 12 people were wounded overnight by shelling in the southern city of Mykolaiv, the regional governor said. Six people were wounded by Russian shelling in Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, regional governor Oleg Sinegubov said, after raids the previous day left seven dead across the region. Ukrainian emergency services also said the death toll in the eastern city of Chasiv Yar had risen to 45, two days after Russian shelling leveled a residential building in the Donetsk region of Donbas.
