War in Ukraine: kyiv strikes a Russian ammunition depot, Moscow advances in the east… an update on the situation
|La Russie poursuit ses attaques de Kiev, pourtant loin des zones de combat, à l'aide de drones. MAXPPP – IMAGO/Andreas Stroh
Tous les jours, Midi Libre fait le point sur la situation en Ukraine. Ce samedi 7 septembre, découvrez les dernières actualités autour du conflit.
kyiv claimed responsibility for a strike on a Russian munitions depot in a border region on Saturday, with Moscow claiming the capture of a new village in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine also said it had countered a “massive” drone attack directed toward Kiev, the capital, during the night from Friday to Saturday. It comes after a week of intense Russian bombing that killed at least 55 people in Poltava, in central Ukraine, and seven others in Lviv, in the west, where hundreds of people attended the funeral of a mother and her three daughters on Friday. Lviv, nearly a thousand kilometers from the front, is very close to Ukraine's western border shared with EU and NATO countries.
Russia also announces almost daily that it has destroyed Ukrainian drones launched against its territory. A major fire causing the detonation of explosives broke out on Saturday after a Ukrainian drone attack in the Russian region of Voronezh, which borders Ukraine, and an evacuation of residents was ordered, the local governor announced. Russian air defense systems “detected and neutralized a drone” early in the morning, Governor Alexander Gusev wrote on Telegram. While “no one was injured”, the crash of the drone caused a fire on the ground “which spread to explosive objects, and a detonation occurred”, he said, without giving further details on the nature of these objects.
Evacuation of a Russian village
Due to the fire, “It was decided to evacuate the residents of a village” to nearby locations, the same source said. According to Russian Telegram channels, the fire broke out in an ammunition depot. The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) later claimed to have struck an ammunition depot.
A source in the SBU told AFP that Kiev was targeting “military airfields, ammunition depots and infrastructure” with the aim of “creating a demilitarized zone in the Russian regions bordering Ukraine”.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russia launched 67 drone attacks on Ukraine overnight, and 58 of these aircraft were shot down. Journalists in Kiev heard loud explosions overnight.
Drone attack on Kiev
“There is almost no night without Russian drone attacks on the territory of Ukraine. And today we had another massive night drone attack,” the Kiev Municipality wrote on social networks on Saturday. The debris of a downed drone fell near the Ukrainian parliament, right in the city center.
Local officials on the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine on Saturday reported at least six deaths in Russian shelling. Three people died in the industrial town of Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region (east). The regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Kherson each deplored one death.
The Russian army also claimed responsibility on Saturday for the capture of a new village in eastern Ukraine, where it continued its advance against outnumbered Ukrainian troops lacking firepower.
Capture of a Ukrainian village
Russian forces have "liberated the town of Kalynove” in the Donetsk region, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. The village is located about 35 kilometers from Pokrovsk, a major logistics hub that has been targeted for several weeks by Russian troops who are getting closer and closer.
Despite a surprise cross-border attack launched by kyiv on August 6 in the Kursk region, Moscow continues to steadily gain ground in the Ukrainian Donetsk region, which remains the epicentre of the fighting.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin also displayed his unwavering determination to conquer the entire Donbass, the large industrial zone in eastern Ukraine, which includes the Donetsk region. He also said he was ready to hold talks with kyiv on the basis of those in spring 2022, if Ukraine so requests, while Moscow had previously said it ruled out any discussions due to the Ukrainian attack in the Kursk region.
Italy's support
On the diplomatic front, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Saturday, on the sidelines of an economic forum held on the shores of Italy's Lake Como. Ms. Meloni assured Ukraine of her unwavering support. "We must not fall into the trap of Russian propaganda" by believing that Ukraine's fate was sealed, she warned.
The day before, Mr. Zelensky had participated in a meeting of Kiev's international supporters in Germany and met Chancellor Olaf Scholz, an opportunity to demand "more weapons".