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The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces said Kyiv is aiming to conduct a counteroffensive in 2024, even as the outmanned and outgunned military has faced criticism for a perceived lack of progress during its drive against invading Russian troops over the past six months.
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Oleksandr Pavlyuk, named Ukraine’s ground commander on February 11, said in televised remarks on March 6 that the military is now focusing on stabilizing front-line positions and regrouping troops with a goal to “conduct counteroffensive operations this year.”
After a successful counteroffensive against Russian forces occupying regions in the east and south of the country, Ukraine’s progress has slowed over recent months, with leaders in Kyiv pleading with Western allies for deliveries of badly needed ammunition and air defense systems.
Also on March 6, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he and visiting Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis witnessed a deadly Russian missile attack while visiting the Black Sea port city of Odesa.
Ukrainian authorities said at least five people were killed in the attack.
Mitsotakis confirmed that Russian missiles attacked the city while he and Zelenskiy were present, saying “we had explosions very close to us.”
Mitsotakis added that he and the Ukrainian leader, as well as their teams, did not have time to take shelter, calling the incident “an astonishing experience.”
The Russian military said its forces had struck a storage facility that was housing unmanned Ukrainian boats, although the claim could not immediately be verified.
“The goal has been achieved. The target has been hit,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi amid tensions over Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant, which is under Russian occupation with IAEA observers stationed at the site
Russian state media said the meeting took place at Putin’s residence in Sochi and that Aleksei Likhachev, the head of the Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom, also participated. Grossi on February 23 called for “maximum military restraint” after a string of powerful explosions occurred near the nuclear plant that week.
“The situation continues to be very fragile,” Grossi told reporters on March 4 as he announced his trip to meet Putin
Overnight, Ukrainian and Russian forces traded drone attacks that left thousands of people in western Ukraine without electricity and a gas storage depot at a Russian metal plant on fire.
Ukraine’s air defenses shot down most of the drones launched by Russia in its latest wave of strikes at its territory on March 6, but the attack still left thousands of people without electricity hundreds of kilometers from the front line in the east, the military and regional officials said.
Air defenses downed 38 out of the 42 drones launched by Russia at eight regions early on March 6, the General Staff of Ukraine’s military reported.
“As a result of combat actions, 38 Shaheds were shot down in the Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Kherson, Khmelnytskiy, Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Vinnytsya, and Sumy regions,” the military said in a statement, adding that information about potential casualties and damages would be updated during the day.
Russian troops in the occupied part of the eastern Donetsk region also launched five S-300 surface-to-air missiles at Ukrainian targets, the military said, without elaborating.
However, debris from six Russian drones downed in the western Khmelnitskiy region, some 800 kilometers away from the eastern battlefields, fell on a power substation, triggering a fire that interrupted the power supply to more than 14,000 people in the region, Ukraine’s Energy Ministry reported.
Although the fire had been largely extinguished later in the day, more than 2,500 people were still without power, the ministry said.
Farther east, Russian forces continued the indiscriminate shelling of civilian settlements near the front line in Donetsk, regional authorities said, killing at least one person on March 6.
In the village of Netaylovye, a 63-year-old man was wounded by Russian shelling and died on his way to the hospital, regional Governor Vadym Filashkin said.
In Russia, a gasoline storage depot in Kursk region near the Ukrainian border caught fire after being hit by two Ukrainian drones, regional Governor Roman Starovoit said on Telegram, adding that there were no casualties.
The reservoir was located on the territory of the Mikhailov mining and processing integrated plant in the city of Zheleznogorsk, which is one of Russia’s largest industrial facilities producing and enriching iron ore.
Kyiv has not officially commented on the strike, but an anonymous source from Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Military Intelligence (HUR) was quoted by Reuters as saying it was responsible for the attack.
The strike would be the HUR’s second success in as many days after Russian patrol vessel Sergei Kotov was reportedly sunk early on March 5 off the coast of Moscow-occupied Crimea by what the HUR said were high-tech Ukrainian sea drones.
Feodosia is located near the Kerch Strait, which links the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
With reporting by Reuters
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