ODESSA, UKRAINE – Ukrainian forces hit ammunition depots in the depths of Russian-occupied territory in the south and east of the country, while Russia bombed Ukrainian cities in the east in its drive to capture the entire Donbas area, said Ukrainian officials.
Long-range attacks herald the next phase of the war, with Ukraine seeking to liberate its southern regions of Russia and Moscow seeking to seize more of eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine used multi-launch rocket systems known as Himars and provided by the United States to carry out 30 attacks in recent days against high-value targets such as ammunition depots and command posts, said Oleksiy Arestovych, Ukrainian presidential adviser .
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The Himars “have changed the rules of the game on the battlefield for our benefit,” Mr. Arestovych in a video posted on social media.
Ukraine on Monday claimed success in its efforts in the south, saying eight foreign ships entered Danube ports after Ukrainian forces drove the Russian army off the strategic island of the snake in the Black Sea. Ukraine, a major exporter of wheat, has struggled to export its grains since Russia seized its main ports, causing food shortages worldwide.
The Ukrainian army said a tank strike took place on Monday afternoon in New Kakhovka, a town on the south bank of the Dnipro River that Russia seized in the early days of the war. Mr. Arestovych said the strike was carried out with a Himars.
A video shared on social media by Ukrainian officials showed a big explosion. The Ukrainian armed forces said the attack destroyed ammunition, artillery and armored vehicles. Officials appointed by Russia said civilian infrastructure, such as a market, residential housing and a fertilizer storage site, were affected, killing seven people and injuring 80.
The aftermath of the bombings near Mykolaiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday.
Photo: mikhail palinchak / Shutterstock
At the last minute on Tuesday, a big explosion shook the city of Luhansk, the capital of one of the two Russian-created states in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, according to images posted on social media by local residents . Russian military correspondents told social media that an ammunition dump had been hit in the Luhansk industrial zone. Unlike Donetsk, the capital of another state in the Donbas region that is hit by Ukrainian strikes every day, the city of Luhansk, far from the front lines, had largely spared violence so far. .
The rubble pollutes a stadium damaged by a military attack on Bakhmut, a city in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.
Photo: GLEB GARANICH / REUTERS
In the south, Ukrainian special forces and partisans carried out assaults on infrastructure and collaborators behind Russian lines. On Monday, Evgeny Yunakov, head of the Russian-occupied Velykyi Bobryk administration, died in an explosion, Ukrainian and Russian officials said. The incident was the latest in a series of similar killings in Russian-occupied territories.
Ukrainian forces hit targets in the Russian-controlled city of Energodar with drones, Ukrainian and Russian officials said. Ukrainian officials said unmanned aerial vehicles crashed into a military compound; pro-Russian local officials said the target was a residential building.
Both sides have suffered heavy losses as the conflict has turned into a war of attrition, defined by relentless bursts of heavy artillery and missiles. As the West transports long-range weapons to Ukraine, the Russian army has intensified missile attacks in positions away from the front lines.
Although strikes have continued across the country, most of Moscow’s firepower has been training in the Donetsk region in the days since it claimed control of the entire Lugansk region. Russia and the separatist forces controlled by Moscow already have part of Donetsk. The capture of the rest of the region would give Moscow full control of the Donbas area, which the Kremlin made its priority after withdrawing its forces from central Ukraine in late March.
A funeral for dozens of Russian-backed fighters in the Luhansk region of Ukraine is being held on Tuesday.
Photo: ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO / REUTERS
Destroyed buildings in Horenka, a village outside the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv.
Photo: roman pilipey / Shutterstock
In the northeastern region of Kharkiv, Kharkiv, Bohodukhiv and Izyum districts were heavily bombed on Tuesday, Governor Oleh Synyehubov said. Ukrainian forces said they successfully prevented Russian forces from advancing towards the cities of Dementiivka and Izyum, he said.
Military officials from Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, along with a UN delegation, will hold talks in Istanbul on Wednesday on a plan to export Ukrainian grain to the international market, Turkey’s defense minister said.
Turkey and the UN have been working to negotiate an agreement to export more than 20 million metric tons of grain that have been trapped in Ukraine. At stake is how the grain is exported across the Black Sea, where Russian and Ukrainian forces have set up sea mines.
The Turkish Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that negotiations with Russia and Ukraine had “developed in a positive way”.
Meanwhile, the U.S. said Tuesday it was providing an additional $ 1.7 billion in aid to support the Ukrainian government’s essential services, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. To date, the U.S. has provided $ 4 billion in government aid to help Kyiv pay the salaries of health workers, teachers and officials and to keep gas and electricity flowing, the agency said.
European Union finance ministers agreed on Tuesday to grant a loan to Ukraine of 1 billion euros, equivalent to 1 billion dollars, the first tranche of a 9 billion euro loan that the leaders of the bloc they signed last month.
The funds are being made available to Ukraine to meet urgent basic service bills in the coming months, and are intended to match short-term US funding for the country. The EU will also cover interest payments on the first tranche of the loan, which Ukraine will have years to repay. It adds to a 1.2 billion euro loan for Ukraine that the EU granted after the start of the war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Iran on July 19 for a trilateral summit with the presidents of Iran and Turkey and for bilateral meetings, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday. The three leaders have previously held summits to discuss the conflict in Syria. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that the U.S. has information that Tehran is preparing to provide Russia with drones for Ukraine’s battlefield.
—Laurence Norman in Brussels and Jared Malsin in Istanbul have contributed to this article.
The Ukrainian government has ushered in a new era of public relations since the start of the war, using tactics such as filming dogs on the battlefield and teaming up with celebrities to help raise funds and weapons to deal with Russia. WSJ explains. Photographic composition: Emily Siu
Write to Vivian Salama at vivian.salama@wsj.com and Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com
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