After four and a half months of war in Ukraine, the Russian military continues its "relentless" bombardment of Donetsk, while the US pledged yesterday Friday to offer new military aid to Kiev.
"The whole front line is being shelled incessantly," Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kirilenko said last night. "They don't stop shelling Donetsk (...) Bakhmut is being shelled, day and night Slavyansk, Kramatorsk is being shelled ...," he wrote on Telegram.
Earlier yesterday Kirilenko said six people were killed and 21 wounded in the last 24 hours by the shelling in the region.
New Russian army offensive
According to him, the Russian army "has begun to regroup or rather reconfigure its groups and is preparing for new actions in Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Bakhmut".
In the Kharkiv region, Ukraine's second largest city, four people were killed and nine wounded in the past 24 hours, Governor Oleg Shyngubov said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk called on civilians in the Russian-held Kherson and Zaporizhzhya districts to leave.
"Please, leave. Our army will begin the recapture of these areas. Our determination is absolute, And it will be difficult later to open humanitarian corridors," Vereshchuk said."
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited areas on and near the front yesterday, including a hospital in Dnipro where wounded soldiers are being treated. He also toured the defense lines in Dnipropetrovsk and Krivoy Rog.
In addition, a senior Pentagon official said that the new U.S. military aid to Ukraine, amounting to 400 million U.S. dollars, is expected to be increased in the coming months. dollars - which includes four Himars multiple rocket launcher systems and 155 mm shells - will improve the Ukrainian army's ability to target Russian arms depots and supply lines.
In total so far, Washington has provided $6.9 billion in military aid to Kiev since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
"Destruction of crops"
By bombing the Donetsk region, Moscow is trying to take over the entire Donbass valley, which is its strategic goal.
According to the regional governor, the Russian army has started to set the crops on fire: "There are huge fires in the fields which the enemy is deliberately causing. They are trying to destroy the crops by all means. They are bombing agricultural machinery, harvesters," he complained.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, a country considered the world's breadbasket, has caused food prices to skyrocket and has contributed to rising inflation worldwide.
Yesterday, foreign ministers of the Group of 20 (G20) meeting in Indonesia "expressed deep concern about the humanitarian impact of the war" in Ukraine, Indonesian diplomatic chief Retno Marsudi said.
The impact of the war "is being felt globally in food, energy and budgets," she stressed. "And as always, poor and developing countries are hit hardest."
Although the G20 did not unanimously condemn the Russian invasion, the West felt it had succeeded in widening the front against Russia and clearly blaming it for the war and the food and energy crisis it caused.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to the AP, walked out of the summit, which was attended by his US counterpart Anthony Blinken, mid-day.
This was the first time since the start of the war in February that the two men were at the same summit, but Blinken refused to meet separately with Lavrov. The Russian minister responded that Moscow was not running behind Washington calling for talks.
Source: in.gr
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