Ukrainian forces struck an air defense system on Russian-occupied territory in the east of the country on Tuesday afternoon, in the latest signal of how long-range artillery sent by the West is changing the calculation of the war.
Russian state news agencies reported that Ukrainian forces had launched an attack on an air defense system that protected the sky over Luhansk, the capital of one of two Russian-created states in the eastern Donbass area of Ukraine.
The attack is the latest in a series that Ukraine has carried out against high-value targets such as ammunition depots and command posts since multiple rocket launch systems known as Himars began to arrive from the United States last month.
“The occupants have already felt very well what modern artillery is, and they will not have a safe rearguard anywhere in our land,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video overnight.
Images posted on social media by Luhansk residents on Tuesday afternoon showed a big explosion. Russian military correspondents told social media that an ammunition dump had been hit in the Luhansk industrial zone.
“Ukraine’s armed forces launched a massive attack on the military air defense unit, which guarantees the safety of the city of Luhansk,” said Andriy Marochko, spokesman for the self-proclaimed People’s Militia of the Luhansk People’s Republic.
Ukrainian soldiers in the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine.
Photo: GLEB GARANICH / REUTERS
Emergency workers are searching for bodies under the rubble in Chasiv Yar after a Russian attack.
Photo: Emanuele Satolli for The Wall Street Journal
The Luhansk People’s Republic later said nine missiles had been fired at Luhansk from American-made Hymars.
Russian forces claimed control of the entire Luhansk region earlier this month after weeks of a tough battle that has been costly on both sides.
Serhiy Haidai, the exiled governor of Luhansk, said strikes at Russian ammunition depots had disrupted supply, noting an increase in activity by Russian subversion and reconnaissance groups probing Ukrainian lines to find weaknesses.
At the same time, the Russian army has intensified missile attacks in positions away from the front lines.
The death toll from a Russian strike in a residential building in Chasiv Yar over the weekend rose to 47, including a child, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the office of the Ukrainian president. Nine people were pulled alive from the rubble, he said.
Residents receive humanitarian aid in the city of Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine.
Photo: olga maltseva / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
A destroyed residential area in Severodonetsk, eastern Ukraine.
Photo: olga maltseva / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
Russian troops bombed the Nikopol district of Dnipropetrovsk overnight using multiple rocket launch systems, according to Ukrainian officer Valentyn Reznichenko.
Since Russia took over Luhansk, it has targeted the Donetsk region, part of which is already controlled by Russia and separatist forces. 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.
“In the Donbas, offensive attempts don’t stop, the situation doesn’t get easier and losses don’t go down,” Zelensky said.
The head of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, backed by Russia, said on Wednesday that Russian and separatist forces were advancing towards the cities of Siversk and Soledar, according to Russian state news agency TASS. The cities lie between Severodonetsk, which Russia captured late last month, and the city of Slovyansk, which is one of Moscow’s next targets, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank with its in Washington.
Mr. Pushilin also said that more than 100 cases of captured Ukrainian fighters are ready to be taken to court. Some of the cases would be tried by a court, others by a court, he said.
Last month, a court in the Donetsk People’s Republic sentenced three foreign fighters to death – two from the United Kingdom, both of whom had lived in Ukraine for years before the conflict, and one from Morocco, who has Ukrainian nationality. those to work. as mercenaries.
Mr Pushilin said the three men, Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner of the UK and Brahim Saadoun, born in Morocco, had appealed their sentences, but would face death by firing squad if their appeals they are rejected.
Write to Isabel Coles at isabel.coles@wsj.com and to Evan Gershkovich at evan.gershkovich@wsj.com
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