KIEV, Sept 12 (Askume) – Russian troops on Thursday cut off power and water to a railway hub in northern Ukraine and cut off water supplies to the eastern city of Pokrovsk, hampering their advance to the battlefield.
The war in Ukraine has reached a climax more than two and a half years after Russia invaded the country, with Moscow regularly attacking Ukrainian infrastructure while its forces try to seize Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region.
The United States says Iran has supplied Russia with hundreds of ballistic missiles. Russia has warned the West that it will respond if Western weapons are not allowed to launch a major attack on Russian territory.
Russian forces are gaining ground in parts of eastern Ukraine, including Pokrovsk, and seizing the area could help Moscow open new lines of attack and complicate logistics in eastern Ukraine.
The governor of the Donetsk region said that filtration stations had stopped working due to heavy fighting and water supplies to Pokrovsk had been disrupted. He said there was no prospect of a quick solution to the problem and called on civilians to flee the city.
“The situation is difficult and will not get better soon. So I urge you again to evacuate!” police officer Vadim Filyashkin wrote in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
Local authorities said electricity and gas supplies for cooking and heating had been cut off in the city, which lies straddling several important road and rail lines passing through the Donetsk region.
Public intelligence reports from Ukrainian deep state analysts indicate that Russian advances in the area near Pokrovsk have slowed, but Moscow’s forces are moving south from the attack line and heading towards nearby Ukrainian cities.
The Ukrainian military said its troops were blocking Moscow’s troops at the Kulishvili border crossing, an area Ukraine also annexes. Russia has attempted to violate Kiev’s border in the area 23 times in the past day.
Some Russian military bloggers claim that Moscow’s troops have actually occupied Ukrainsk, which had a pre-war population of more than 10,000. There have been no updates on Russian progress in the area.
Duel Front
After months of retreat in the east, Kiev’s forces suddenly invaded Russia’s Kursk region last month and advanced rapidly in an attempt to regain the fighting initiative and drive Russian troops out of the east.
However, Russia maintained its offensive pressure in the east, and a Russian commander said on Wednesday that its forces had regained control of about 10 settlements in the Kursk region during a counteroffensive.
Ukraine has not commented on Russia’s claims, and Askume has not been able to independently verify reports from the battlefield.
The city of Konotop, a railway hub in the Sumy region that Kiev uses as a staging post for cross-border infiltrations, was reportedly heavily damaged in a Russian drone attack overnight.
Local officials said the attack injured at least 14 people, caused “significant” damage to energy infrastructure and disrupted the city’s power supply.
Rescue workers are working to restore power to the city, which had a pre-war population of about 83,000. Regional officials said there were 10 explosions during the attack and Mayor Artem Semenikhin said the power system was in critical condition.
“Right now, energy crews are doing everything they can to get power to hospitals and water systems,” he said Thursday.
The air force said the attack on Konotop was part of a wider Russian offensive using 64 drones. It reportedly shot down 44 drones in nine different areas.
Such attacks have occurred almost every night since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Although Ukraine is short of weapons and does not have a large stockpile of long-range missiles, it has attempted to retaliate by launching hundreds of drones at Russia.
Semenikhin said Konotop authorities did not know when power would be restored and planned to provide water on an hourly basis.
