8.30 a.m .: According to their own statements, the Ukrainian armed forces have successfully repelled attacks from the Russian side in the Sloviansk region in the eastern region of Donetsk. The General Staff announced on Sunday in Kyiv that there had been massive artillery fire on military and civilian infrastructure in various towns. The enemy, however, had no success, recorded many losses and withdrew again after resistance from the Ukrainian side. The information could not be independently verified.
The Russian military also fired massively with artillery in the direction of Siwersk and Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. Dozens of towns were affected by the attacks. “In view of the heavy losses in their own ranks, the majority of the occupying forces’ units are in a very bad moral and psychological condition and are looking for a way to avoid participating in further hostilities,” the Ukrainian General Staff report said.
8:45 p.m .: According to the Ukrainian secret service, Russia is preparing for the “next phase of the invasion”. According to the Kyiv Independent, Vadym Skibitsky, representative of the intelligence department in the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, sees “undoubted” indications of this. However, Skibitsky sees no signs of Belarus entering the war in the near future. “The threat is there. today it is not as high as in February, but it may increase over time.”
Military expert Phillips O’Brien explains on Twitter the significance of these attacks. He quotes the Ukrainian governor of Luhansk: According to this, the attacks on the camps mean that the Russian soldiers can no longer store their ammunition and other supplies in the vulnerable goods depots. Instead, ammunition should now be delivered directly to the soldiers at the front, without fixed intermediate stations in the war zone.
According to O’Brien, this is a clear sign of how successful the attacks are for Ukraine – and how devastating for the Russian army. “If Russia really does this, they will have serious problems. If they really do without the interim storage facilities, that means that they are practically improvising.” In addition, Putin’s army needs an enormous number of trucks in order to be able to maintain the supply chains own that amount, O’Brien doubts, summing up: “Bring more long-range weapons systems to Ukraine!”
4:16 p.m .: According to British intelligence experts, Russia has repeatedly given false information about alleged successes in its invasion of Ukraine. The scope and scale of Russian advances remain limited, the Defense Ministry’s daily intelligence update on the Ukraine war said in London on Saturday. The statement made by the Russians a few days ago that they had advanced into the city of Siwersk was not true.
“Russia has also previously made hasty and false claims of achievements,” the statement said. The reason for this is probably at least in part the desire to demonstrate successes to the population at home and to strengthen the morale of their own troops.
The Ukrainians, on the other hand, have successfully repelled Russian attacks since withdrawing from the city of Lysychansk, according to British experts. The line of defense has since been shortened and strengthened, which proved essential to thwart the Russian offensive.
Since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression at the end of February, the British government has regularly published intelligence information on the course. Moscow accuses London of a targeted disinformation campaign.
10:51 a.m .: During an inspection of the troops involved in the Ukraine war, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered an expansion of the attacks on the neighboring country. “After hearing (the situation report), the head of the Russian Defense Ministry gave the necessary instructions to expand the activities of the army groups in all directions of attack in order to deprive the Kiev regime of the possibility of further massive artillery and rocket attacks on infrastructure and civilians in Donbass and in other regions,” said the ministry on Saturday.
This is Shoigu’s second inspection of Russian forces in Ukraine. The first took place at the end of June. At the current event, the Russian Defense Minister honored two high-ranking generals, including the head of Army Group “Center”, Colonel-General Alexander Lapin, who is considered to be one of the leaders in the conquest of the Sievjerodonetsk-Lysychansk conurbation in the Donbass by troops loyal to Moscow.
Saturday, July 16, 8:17 a.m.: According to Ukrainian information, the Russian armed forces have intensified the attacks in the east of the country after regrouping their forces. In the past 24 hours, Ukraine has fended off Russian assault attempts in the direction of Bakhmut and in front of Donetsk, the General Staff in Kyiv said in its situation report on Saturday. “After a regrouping, the enemy has resumed the attack on the Wuhlehirsk thermal power plant, and hostilities are continuing,” it said. The information cannot be verified independently.
However, military experts from the Institute for the Study of the War (ISW) have also observed that Russian troops are ending the breather they had after capturing the Sievarodonetsk/Lysychansk conurbation. At the moment it is still a matter of minor skirmishes. “If the operational pause is actually over, the Russians will probably continue and intensify their attacks in the next 72 hours,” says the ISW analysis.
10:08 p.m .: One day after the devastating rocket attack in the western Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, an air alarm was triggered throughout Ukraine. Videos and photos circulated on social networks on Friday evening, which are said to show flying rockets and clouds of smoke in the southeastern city of Dnipro. The governor of the central Ukrainian region of Poltava, Dmytro Lunin, also confirmed explosions in Kremenchuk.
According to the Odessa military governor, Maxym Marchenko, another rocket was shot down over southern Ukraine. However, a total of three rockets were fired into the area. Details of possible victims and destruction were not known for the time being. Information from the war zones cannot be independently verified.
At least 23 people were killed in a Russian rocket attack on the center of the western Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Thursday. Almost 200 people needed medical help, 80 of them were taken to hospitals. Eleven people are still considered missing.
9:29 p.m .: The United States has rejected the Russian account that the missile attack in the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia hit a military target. “I have no indication that a military target was anywhere near there,” a senior US Department of Defense official, who asked to remain anonymous, said Friday. Rather, the hit object looks “like a building with apartments”.
The Russian missiles hit downtown Vinnytsia on Thursday, hundreds of kilometers from the frontline of the war. According to Ukrainian sources, at least 23 people were killed, including three children. More than hundreds of other people were injured.
However, Russia denied attacking civilians in Vinnytsia. Rather, a meeting of high-ranking Ukrainian army commanders “with representatives of foreign arms suppliers” was shot at, the Defense Ministry said on Friday in Moscow. “The participants in the meeting were eliminated.”
On the other hand, the Ukrainian army had announced that three Russian rockets had hit a building with offices and small shops and an adjacent parking lot in Vinnytsia. Pictures circulated by local rescue workers showed a 12-story building badly damaged.
8:32 p.m .: According to its own statements, Ukraine has received its first delivery of the modern M270 multiple rocket launcher system. The first M270s have arrived, Defense Minister Oleksiy Resnikov said on Friday in the online networks. “No mercy for the enemy,” he added, referring to the invading Russian forces.
In June, Great Britain announced the delivery of the M270 system to Ukraine. This allows targets to be hit at a distance of up to 80 kilometers with precision-guided missiles.
Ukraine has already received other modern missile systems from the West. These systems allow the Ukrainian armed forces to launch attacks on the Russian army from a greater distance, without being within range of the Russian artillery themselves.
Reznikov called the M270 “good company on the battlefield” for the Himars missile launchers recently delivered to Ukraine by the United States.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
