Russia bombs supermarket in Donbass – fighting in Kursk

Ukraine is flanking its surprise attack on the Russian region of Kursk with drone strikes against other areas. But Kiev is also suffering a new heavy blow.

After Ukraine’s surprise attack in the Russian border region of Kursk and mass drone attacks against other areas, Moscow’s troops bombed a supermarket in broad daylight in Donbass. According to authorities, at least 14 people died in the rocket attack in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka. About 40 others were injured. “A strike by Russian terrorists on an ordinary supermarket and a post office. People are under the rubble,” wrote President Volodymyr Zelensky on Telegram. For the country scarred by almost two and a half years of Russian invasion, this attack on another civilian object is a new heavy blow.

With regard to the Ukrainian advance in the Russian border region of Kursk, Zelensky said that evening that the results there were good and that Moscow was now experiencing for itself what war meant. “Russia has brought war to our country and should feel what it has done,” he said. During the night, Russian authorities then reported a large-scale Ukrainian drone attack on the Lipetsk region south of Moscow.

Russia deployed additional troops and equipment to the Kursk region, where hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers entered on Tuesday. Russian military bloggers confirmed that a military column east of the district town of Rylsk with many Russian soldiers was hit by Ukrainian artillery. Unverifiable videos on social networks showed destroyed trucks and lifeless bodies in uniform.

Media critical of the Kremlin reported that around 120 Russian soldiers had been killed before their planned combat mission. Officially, there was no information on this. However, the domestic secret service FSB arrested a man who had taken pictures of the destroyed column and corpses.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Ukrainian attempts to penetrate deep into the Kursk region had been repelled with aircraft and artillery. Russian military bloggers, however, had called for the truth to be told about the situation. Ukrainian troops had established themselves in several positions, they said.

In the Kursk region, the authorities upgraded the state of emergency to a national emergency. This means there are more personnel and resources. In the Kursk region alone, more than 50 injured people were taken to hospitals. Thousands had to seek safety because of the Ukrainian advance.

After the massive drone attacks on the Lipetsk region, a state of emergency was declared there too. At a military airfield near the city of Lipetsk, around 300 kilometers north of the Ukrainian-Russian border, massive explosions occurred in an ammunition depot overnight. Air raid warnings were also triggered in the neighboring regions of Kursk, Bryansk, Belgorod and Voronezh, as well as on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Russian authorities said that over 70 drones had been intercepted.

Four villages around the Lipetsk military airport were to be evacuated. According to Governor Igor Artamonov, public transport was stopped in Lipetsk and the surrounding area. Damage to a power plant led to power outages. Nine people were injured as a result of the attacks. The military airport is a good 280 kilometers as the crow flies from the Ukrainian border.

The Ukrainian General Staff did not provide any further information on the fighting on Russian territory. The morning report on Facebook only mentioned Russian air and artillery attacks on the border between the north-eastern Ukrainian regions of Chernihiv and Sumy. More than half a dozen towns, especially in the border area with Russia, were affected.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian military observers from the DeepState channel identified an area of ​​around 140 square kilometers in the Kursk region with three villages as being under Ukrainian control. The district town of Sudzha is therefore not under Ukrainian control. There is hardly any information about the events due to an information blackout apparently imposed by the Ukrainian side. However, the advisor in Zelensky’s presidential office, Mykhailo Podoliak, recalled the international reactions, according to which Ukraine has the right to attack Russian territory in its defense against the war.

“The impossible has become possible, and the mythical Russian brutality and excess have now turned against Russia itself,” said Podolyak about the situation in Kursk. A large part of the international community now considers Russia a legitimate target for any operations and weapons. Today, Ukraine is not only fighting with the occupying army, but also successfully against historically strong pro-Russian sympathies and against fears in the West, he said.