After a long wait, the first Gepard anti-aircraft tanks have arrived from Germany. According to the Ukrainian military, they have recaptured a town in the south of the country. All news about the war in Ukraine can be found in the ticker.
Wednesday, July 27, 7:58 a.m .: The Ukrainian military says it has completely conquered the small town of Andriyivka in the Cherson region in the south of the country. “Andriyivka has been liberated and finally cleared of the Russian occupying forces,” spokesman for the “South” command center of the Ukrainian troops, Vladyslav Nazarov, said in a video message on Tuesday evening. The information cannot be verified independently. While troops loyal to Moscow continue to have the initiative in the east of the country, Kyiv has now launched counterattacks in the south.
According to Nazarov, the Ukrainian forces also captured the neighboring town of Losowe a few days ago. Mainly, however, the battles are still being fought by means of artillery on supply lines. The military administration deployed by Moscow in the Kherson region reported another shelling of a bridge over the Dnipro River.
The 1.4-kilometer-long car bridge in the regional capital of Cherson was still intact, a spokesman for the administration said on Wednesday night. He later acknowledged that the bridge was damaged and closed to traffic.
The bridges are strategically important because the Dnipro carries a lot of water and is therefore difficult to cross. The primary goal of the Ukrainian military is to push the occupying Russian troops back to the line behind the Dnipro. To do this, they are attempting, among other things, to shut down the supply lines with the help of the Himar rocket launchers supplied by the USA.
7:37 p.m .: In the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, the Russian troops say they have taken control of Ukraine’s largest coal-fired power plant near Svitlodarsk. On Tuesday, the media of the Donetsk separatists already reported the capture. Pictures should prove the presence of Russian mercenaries of the so-called Wagner group in front of the administration building. According to other reports, however, the fighting around the power plant site, which had been going on since the end of May, continued. The information cannot be verified independently.
The Ukrainian General Staff no longer mentioned the power plant in its evening situation report. Instead, the military leadership only reported fighting around Semyhirya, which was a little further to the west. In the morning report there was still talk of air raids on Ukrainian positions on the power plant site.
4:10 p.m .: During the war in Ukraine, Russia claims to have attacked a base of the so-called International Legion with foreign fighters with rockets. Several dozen foreigners were killed near Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region, the Russian Defense Ministry announced in Moscow on Tuesday. The majority of those killed were Poles, it said.
The information cannot be independently verified. The International Legion fighting in the Ukrainian army only provides isolated information on its own losses and does not provide any information on the composition of the volunteer unit, which also includes Germans.
Tuesday, July 26, 2022, 12:16: In the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, several civilians lost their lives in the course of fighting between Russian and Ukrainian troops. Three people were killed and eight injured in the Ukrainian-controlled part of the region, military governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told Telegram on Tuesday. The dead were in the villages of Krasnohorivka, Marjinka and Soledar. In fact, the entire territory is being shot at by the enemy. “There isn’t a settlement in Donetsk region that isn’t being shelled and that’s safe or relatively safe,” he later told TV.
According to local sources, a civilian was also killed in the town of Horlivka in the part of the Donetsk region controlled by pro-Russian separatists. Five people were also injured in the region, it said. Ukrainian troops fired on the Donetsk area in particular.
In the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk Oblast, the authorities put the number of civilian casualties at 642 since the start of the Russian invasion. More than 1600 people were injured. In the separatist part, on the other hand, according to local statistics, almost 760 civilians were killed and more than 2,400 injured. The information provided by both sides cannot be independently verified.
The United Nations has officially registered more than 5,200 civilian deaths across Ukraine. The number is constantly increasing because many deaths are not yet recorded.
8:02 p.m .: After major losses of territory since the Russian invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj has replaced the commander of the armed forces in eastern Ukraine. The head of state dismissed Hryhorij Halahan by decree on Monday and installed Viktor Horenko in his place. The 44-year-old Major General Halahan had led the special operation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since August 2020. The war there started in 2014.
Meanwhile, the General Staff in Kyiv reported that the Russian units had achieved successes at the Wuhlehirsk coal-fired power plant. On the other hand, attacks in the direction of the towns of Bakhmut and Siwersk were repulsed on the neighboring sector of the front. Russian attacks in the Kharkiv region also failed. Several dozen places, especially in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, were shelled by artillery or bombed by the Luftwaffe.
12:49 p.m .: Ukraine has received the first Gepard anti-aircraft tanks from Germany. “The first three cheetahs officially arrived today,” Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Ukrainian television on Monday. Several tens of thousands of shots were also handed over.
Twelve more Gepard tanks are expected. The delivery is based on an agreement with Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) in May. Ukraine has been fending off a Russian invasion since late February and has repeatedly urged to strengthen its own air defenses.
It is the second delivery of heavy weapons that Germany hands over to Ukraine. In June, the German government had already delivered heavy artillery pieces to Ukraine in the form of the Panzerhaubitze 2000. The Panzerhaubitze is the Bundeswehr’s most modern artillery piece with a range of 40 kilometers. At that time, Ukraine received a total of seven guns.
In addition to the cheetahs, Ukraine is primarily waiting for the modern Iris-T air defense systems from Germany. These should better protect the country from Russian missile attacks. However, the Iris-T is reportedly not scheduled to arrive until the fall.
Monday, July 25, 8:57 a.m.: According to information from Kyiv, the Russian troops made further storm attempts during the night east and south-east of the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk conurbation in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. “The enemy is launching an attack not far from Spirne, fighting is continuing,” the Ukrainian General Staff said in its situation report on Monday. There is also a fight for the suburbs of the Bachmut transport hub.
In most cases, the attacks were repelled and the Russian troops were repulsed, the general staff said. The information cannot be verified independently.
As for the fighting in the south of the country, in the Cherson region, the General Staff limited itself to reporting heavy artillery battles and Russian air raids. Meanwhile, the “South” command of the Ukrainian armed forces announced that it had destroyed two ammunition depots and a command post of Russian troops in its own attacks. There is no independent confirmation for this information either. Ukraine had repeatedly announced an offensive to recapture southern Ukraine.
8:29 p.m .: Ukraine has announced initial successes in the planned recapture of the Russian-occupied Cherson region. “We can say that a turning point has been reached on the battlefield,” Serhiy Khlan of the pro-Kyiv Kherson military administration said in a TV interview on Sunday. “We see our forces advancing openly,” Chlan added.
The Ukrainian troops would switch from the defensive to the counter-offensive. Chlan said that Kherson would be “definitely liberated by September”. Accordingly, the Ukrainians are preparing a ground offensive.
Supported by artillery supplies from the west, the Ukrainian army has gained ground in the southern Ukrainian region in recent weeks. Russian troops captured the capital of Cherson on March 3rd. The region is important to Ukraine’s agriculture and is close to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.
12.40 p.m .: A new justification followed on Saturday afternoon. The missiles were fired at a ship repair facility, the Defense Ministry said in Moscow on Sunday. A Ukrainian warship and a warehouse with US-supplied Harpoon missiles were destroyed in the dock, sources said. Ukraine has repeatedly inflicted heavy blows on the Russian Navy with such missiles.
In addition, as a result of the attacks, facilities for repairing and modernizing the ship inventory of the Ukrainian naval forces were shut down, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. The Russian Foreign Ministry had previously admitted the attacks on Odessa.
The attack on Saturday morning had caused international outrage because Russia had just signed an agreement in Istanbul on the previous day to also export Ukrainian grain from this port in Odessa. The agreement is still valid.
On Friday, Russia pledged in the agreement that ships for export would be allowed to use a sea corridor and not fired at them. The three ports involved must therefore not be attacked. Among other things, it is about the export of millions of tons of grain. The agreement, signed through the mediation of the United Nations and Turkey, provides for exports to be monitored from a control center in Istanbul.
9:58 a.m .: Russia says it destroyed “military infrastructure” in the rocket attack on the Ukrainian port city of Odessa. “High-precision” Kalibr missiles were used in the process, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Telegram on Sunday. The Black Sea port, which is important for Ukrainian grain deliveries, was shelled on Saturday.
Explosive: Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar previously said Russian officials had told Ankara that Moscow denied the attack. “In our contact with Russia, the Russians told us that they had absolutely nothing to do with this attack and that they were investigating the matter very closely and in detail,” Akar said in a statement. And further: “The fact that such an incident occurred immediately after the agreement reached yesterday really worried us.”
Sunday, July 24, 8:31 a.m .: According to Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar, more than 50,000 women serve in the Ukrainian army, more than 5,000 of them are currently at the front. According to the Ukrinform news agency, the politician said this at an international summit of first ladies and gentlemen in Kyiv on Saturday. Of the 50,000 women in the Ukrainian military, a total of 38,000 served as soldiers, while the remainder served in civilian roles. The summit, held on the 150th day of Russia’s war of aggression against her country, was hosted by Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
