Late on Friday night, Iryna Vereshchuk, deputy prime minister for the reintegration ministry of temporarily occupied territories, called on Ukrainians in the occupied territories to leave by “all possible means.” “You must find a way to leave because our armed forces will take over. There will be a great battle. I don’t want to scare anyone, everyone understands everything anyway,” said Vereshchuk. He said evacuations were taking place and people in the occupied territories were aware. Yuriy Sobolevsky, deputy chairman of the Kherson regional council, told United News Ukraine on Saturday that while it is very difficult to evacuate, “it has to be done.” He told those who cannot leave to prepare for tough fights. “Those who can’t [leave] in any way they should prepare for the fact that they will need shelter again, it is necessary to have a supply of water, a certain amount of food to survive the attack of our troops,” said Sobolevskyi. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based thinktank, said on July 6 that Ukrainian forces may be setting the stage for a counteroffensive in the Kherson region. Meanwhile, fighting continues to rage at strategic points along the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Russia continued to fire artillery and rockets into urban areas in the Ukrainian-controlled regions of Donetsk, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv, injuring and killing civilians. The level of violence rose in new areas of Donetsk this week as Russian forces advanced from newly captured territory in neighboring Luhansk. Serhiy Haidai, head of the Luhansk regional military command, said on Friday that Russian forces had not slowed their campaign, rejecting Western assessments that Russia had stopped to rest and regroup after successfully capturing almost all of the Luhansk region on last week. Haidai told Telegram that Russian forces are “firing along the entire front line” as they try to seize more territory in the Donbass, control of which is one of their declared strategic goals. Pavlo Kirilenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration, said on Saturday afternoon that Russia was shelling the Ukrainian-controlled city of Sloviansk “day and night” and the nearby town of Druzivka was hit by a Russian missile. The city of Kramatorsk was also hit, Kyrylenko said. Kirilenko said on Saturday morning that five people were killed and eight wounded on July 8, after a similarly heavy day of shelling in Donetsk. Six rockets were fired into the city of Mykolayiv early Saturday morning, according to its mayor, Oleksandr Sienkovic. The rockets hit residential buildings and private homes, but fortunately no one was injured, he said. In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, a Russian rocket hit a residential building, injuring at least six people, according to regional authorities. In the Donbas region, where Russian forces have been concentrated, Russia is using barrages of artillery shells to level buildings in disputed towns. The tactic forces Ukrainian troops to move away from their positions inside the buildings and retreat. Using newly acquired precision rocket launchers, Ukraine’s new strategy was to target Russian ammunition depots behind the front lines. In the past week, Ukraine has reported dozens of successful attacks on Russian command posts, which include ammunition depots. It is not yet clear whether the rate at which Ukraine is destroying Russian munitions is sufficient to significantly impede their advance. Pointing to their successes, Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked the US for more High Mobility Artillery Missile Systems (Himars), saying it was what was helping Ukraine “press the enemy”. Hours later, US President Joe Biden signed off on an arms package for Ukraine worth up to $400 million, bringing Ukraine’s total to at least 12. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week that his forces had just begun their campaign in Ukraine, challenging the West and Ukraine to defeat them on the battlefield. However, the UK Ministry of Defense disputed Putin’s statement on Saturday. The ministry said in a tweet that Russia was currently moving infantry troops and “obsolete or unsuitable” armored vehicles to Ukraine for future attacks. The statement said the vehicles being developed were designed in the 1950s as “a tractor to pull artillery” with “very limited armour” and were in contrast to the heavily armored infantry vehicles used by Russia in February.
