Juan Pablo Duch
Correspondent
The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, August 29, 2024, p. 25
Moscow. The news from the battlefields yesterday showed little change since Ukrainian troops crossed the border three weeks ago and took the war to the Kursk region: the Russians advanced a few hundred meters towards their most important objective today, the town of Pokrovsk, in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk, and the latter continued to strengthen their positions in occupied Russian territory.
Meanwhile, news agencies reported on several isolated incidents that occurred yesterday and that, by themselves, do not alter the course of this armed conflict for better or worse: Kiev continued its strategy of damaging fuel depots and refineries in areas of Russia far from the border with drones, and Moscow continued to launch missiles, drones and guided bombs from planes against cities in Ukraine.
Ukrainian media have released the first images of drones hitting a fuel depot in the Kirov region, the first Ukrainian attack in that Russian zone 1,100 kilometres from the border, and a refinery in the Rostov region, which caused major fires, confirmed by the respective governors.
At the other end of Rostov, an earlier drone strike on a large refinery caused a fire that, 10 days later, remains unextinguished, according to news agencies.
Russia responded with bombings of Ukrainian cities, the most serious of which yesterday was when a guided bomb destroyed an administrative building in the centre of the city of Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region.
At around 1 a.m. on Thursday, sirens went off in the Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Nikolaev, Kirovograd, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Sumy and Kharkiv when air defense systems detected the flight path of 30 to 40 drones launched by Russia, in what Ukrainian media predict will be another tense night filled with hours spent in shelters.
The commander of the Ukrainian army’s ground forces, Oleksandr Pavliuk, wrote on his Telegram account: “Our air defense units once again demonstrated their expertise by shooting down a fighter-bomber. Su-25 near the town of Kramatorsk in Donetsk, which according to the Ukrainian agency Unian would be the second such aircraft that Russia has lost since the end of July.
The Russian Ministry of Defense does not comment on such news, but bloggers who support the call special military operationquestioned Pavliuk’s words.
The Telegram channel Operation Z – Russian Spring Envoys claims that the fighter-bomber was not shot down, but rather was attacked released thermal traps that the Ukrainians In an incomplete video they presented as part of the explosion of the plane. Within a few days, evidence will appear confirming one version or another.
On the other hand, the Russian authorities, taking into account the recommendations of the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, who inspected the Kursk nuclear plant in Kurchatovo on Tuesday, decided temporarily prohibit access to this city because Ukrainian troops do not give up their attempt to enter Kurchatovoreported Kursk Governor Aleksei Smirnov.
His colleague from the neighbouring Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, decided to evacuate all residents of four localities and announced that in all municipalities within 20 kilometres of the border Schools will teach classes remotely.