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Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces continued in the country’s southeast, Kyiv said on August 8, as official casualty figures from a Russian missile strike in the eastern city of Pokrovsk have risen to at least seven dead and nearly 70 wounded.

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Ukrainian troops continue to carry out attacks against the invading Russian Army in the direction of Berdyansk and Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhya region, the military’s General Staff said in its daily update.

It said that Ukrainian forces carried out nine strikes over the past day targeting the areas where the Russian Army’s “personnel, weapons, and military equipment are concentrated.”

Russian forces carried out seven missile attacks and 42 air strikes over the past 24 hours, the bulletin said.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry meanwhile updated initial casualty figures from the August 7 Russian missile attacks on the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region to at least seven dead and 67 wounded as rescue works resumed.

There were 29 police officers, two rescue workers, and two children among the wounded, according to the ministry.

A photo posted by the ministry on social media showed a badly damaged apartment block with its upper floor completely demolished, while piles of concrete and rubble could be seen on the ground.

Regional officials said that two missiles strikes hit Pokrovsk on August 7, damaging residential and administrative buildings, a hotel, catering establishments, and shops. The strikes were launched about 40 minutes apart, officials said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian nuclear power plants located in territory held by Kyiv will be fully operational by winter to provide electricity for the country, Ukraine’s atomic energy operator said on August 7.

“All the power at our disposal will be given to the electricity grid” after the servicing of some reactors before winter, Energoatom chief Petro Kotin told journalists.

Ukraine currently has three power stations with a total of nine reactors in the territory under its control.

In other developments, the British government has announced new sanctions against an Iranian drone maker and two dozen other businesses and individuals, accusing them of supplying Russia with weapons and components in its war against Ukraine.

“Today’s landmark sanctions will further diminish Russia’s arsenal and close the net on supply chains propping up [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s now-struggling defense industry,” British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said on August 8.

Western countries have imposed a wide range of sanctions against Moscow since February last year to punish Russia for its unjustified invasion of Ukraine.

The new round of British sanctions targets 25 individuals and businesses in Iran, Belarus, Slovakia, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, as well as Russia.

Among them are Iranian drone maker Paravar Pars and seven of its executives, and two Turkey-based exporters of microelectronics. The Iranian supplier has already been subjected to U.S. sanctions announced in February.

The action imposes asset freezes of the sanctioned businesses and individuals, and also prohibits British entities from doing business with them.

The British government said the latest penalties marked its biggest ever action on third-country military suppliers. Britain has placed sanctions on more than 1,600 individuals and entities since the start of the war.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration will announce $200 million of new weapons aid for Ukraine as soon as August 8, U.S. officials told Reuters, as it begins to dole out $6.2 billion of funds discovered after a Pentagon accounting error overvalued billions of Ukrainian aid, two U.S. officials said on August 7.

In May, the Pentagon announced it had mistakenly assigned a higher-than-warranted value to the U.S. weaponry shipped to Kyiv when staff used “replacement value” instead of “depreciated value” to tabulate the billions of dollars worth of ammunition, missiles and other equipment sent to Ukraine.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters