The Russian Air Force is apparently upgrading. The Defense Ministry on Tuesday announced a deal with United Aircraft Corporation to deliver new Su-34 bombers to the front lines. This was reported by the Russian news agency “Tass”. According to Deputy Defense Minister Aleksey Krivoruchko, the package is worth 500 billion rubles ($8.1 billion).
The main focus is on Russian ground communications. The background is that the so-called GLOCs from Crimea are also directly supporting the Russian soldiers on the mainland, including those in the western area. In addition, the Kremlin soldiers used the Crimean town of Dzhankoi as a railway hub for transporting troops and equipment to the occupied settlements in the southern Zasporizhia and Melitopol regions.
The Russian Defense Ministry spoke of an “act of sabotage”. Civilian objects were also damaged, including power lines, a power plant, railway tracks and residential buildings.
In a situation report, the Kiev general staff spoke of violent attacks on Ukrainian positions on the north-western edge of the separatist stronghold of Donetsk. Further north in the Donbass near Bakhmut and Soledar it was possible to fend off Russian assaults.
The enemy had to withdraw with casualties. There was no independent confirmation. An air base near Zhytomyr in western Ukraine was fired upon by Russian planes with cruise missiles, the Ukrainian Air Force said.
The situation is currently the most difficult near Donetsk, where the Ukrainian positions at Avdiivka, Pisky and Marjinka are under heavy fire, Zalushnyj wrote on Facebook. Russian shells fell in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, on Tuesday evening.
There was damage to houses and power outages in some neighborhoods. Ukrainian military reported fierce fighting, especially in the east of the country in the Donbass.
The Russian army fires around 60,000 rounds of ammunition at Ukrainian army positions every day, according to estimates by the Ukrainian supreme commander, Valery Zalushny.
In a video speech, Selenskyj addressed the devastating explosions in Russian military installations on the Crimean peninsula. He warned the population in Russian-occupied areas to avoid such places. “Please don’t go near the military facilities of the Russian army and all those places where they store ammunition and equipment, where they have their headquarters!” he said.
Zelenskyy did not claim the detonations as attacks on Ukraine. The triggers are “very different”, the Russians could also be to blame. Nevertheless, the following applies: “The fewer opportunities the occupiers have to do evil and kill Ukrainians, the sooner we can end this war by liberating our country.”
The queue at the bridge to mainland Russia proves “that the absolute majority of citizens of the terrorist state already understands or at least feels that Crimea is not a place for them,” said Zelenskyy. Videos on social networks show that many Russian vacationers have been leaving the peninsula for days and there are traffic jams in front of the Kerch bridge.
Turkey and the United Nations want to talk about diplomatic ways out of the war imposed by Russia at a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Zelenskyy will meet in Lviv in western Ukraine on Thursday. According to a Turkish announcement, the “end of the war between Ukraine and Russia will also be discussed there through diplomatic channels”. This was announced by the Turkish Presidential Office in Ankara.
UN Secretary-General Guterres is traveling to Lviv at Zelensky’s invitation, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York. The UN did not rule out talks about an end to the fighting, but showed reluctance. “There are a number of issues that are being raised: the conflict in general, the need for a political solution to this conflict,” Dujarric said. Guterres repeatedly emphasizes that he is a friend of the quiet diplomacy that negotiates ways out of a conflict behind closed doors.
Dujarric said there was “no doubt” that the dangerous situation around Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and a planned international expert mission to the power plant would also be addressed. Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, occupied by Russia, has been under fire for days.
Guterres and Erdogan brought Russia and Ukraine to an agreement on the export of Ukrainian grain at the end of July.
After the Crimean explosions, further information on damage and possible causes is expected on Wednesday. A Russian air force base in western Crimea was badly damaged last week, but the extent of the destruction could only be measured a day later using satellite images. The detonations far behind the front have repeatedly given rise to speculation about the range of Ukrainian missiles.