Russian forces advance on Ukraine frontline city after Crimea oil depot attack
Russian forces have entered the outskirts of the eastern Ukraine frontline city of Toretsk.
In short:
Russian forces have entered the outskirts of the eastern Ukraine frontline city of Toretsk, according to Ukraine's military.
Russia, which now controls just under a fifth of Ukrainian territory, has been advancing towards Toretsk since August.
What's next?
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered his top brass do "everything that can be done" to minimise Moscow's advance along the frontline.
Russian forces have entered the outskirts of the eastern Ukrainian frontline city of Toretsk, according to Ukraine's military.
"The situation is unstable, fighting is taking place literally at every entrance [to the city]," Anastasiia Bobovnikova, a spokesperson Luhansk's operational tactical group, told Ukraine's national broadcaster on Monday, local time.
"The Russians have entered the eastern outskirts of the city."
The Russian defence ministry said earlier on Monday that its forces inflicted damage to personnel and equipment near several settlements in the area — including near Toretsk.
Russia, which now controls just under a fifth of Ukrainian territory, has been advancing towards Toretsk since August.
It has taken village by village with infantry aided by the increased use of the highly destructive guided bombs.
For Ukraine, Toretsk has been a frontline city for 10 years now, as it is close to Ukraine's territories seized by Russian-backed separatists in 2014.
It has since become an anchor of Kyiv's fortifications.
- Fighting in Grodivka, Sloviansk
- 'Highly likely' North Korean soldiers killed in Donetsk, Seoul defence chief says
- Ukraine strikes oil depot in occupied Crimea, military says
- Russia strikes two civilian ships in Odesa, Ukraine says
- Russia says emergency hotlines with US and NATO remain in place
Fighting in Grodivka, Sloviansk
Ukraine has been fighting Russia near Pokrovsk, as troops close in on the key logistics hub.
For Moscow, seizing the town of Toretsk would bring closer Russian President Vladimir Putin's goal of taking the Ukraine's east region known as Donbas.
After failing to capture the capital Kyiv when launching Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Mr Putin focused on taking the old industrial heartland.
Donbas, which covers the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, has since become the war's main theatre where some of biggest battles in Europe for generations have taken place.
The Russian defence ministry in a briefing said it also captured the village of Grodivka, a settlement in the Donetsk region near Pokrovsk, as troops close in on the key logistics hub.
Further north in the Donetsk region, Ukraine said a Russian attack had killed one person and wounded seven — including children aged two and 13 — in the city of Sloviansk.
Vadym Filashkin, governor of Donetsk region, said on the Telegram messaging app that the shelling damaged six multi-storey apartment buildings, an administrative building and a business site.
Russian forces also launched several missiles and dozens of drones overnight at Ukraine, the air force in Kyiv said, with two missiles shot down over the capital and the third exploding near an airfield in the central Khmelnytskyi region.
Authorities in Kyiv said debris from the downed missiles had landed near a kindergarten.
A Russian attack on Ukraine's north-eastern city of Kharkiv on Tuesday injured at least 11 people, including a child, regional officials said.
Governor Oleh Syniehubov said via Telegram that the attack damaged infrastructure and the authorities were working to verify the type of weapon used.
Donbas, which covers the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, has become the war's main theatre.
With Ukraine now losing more and more territory, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered his top brass do "everything that can be done" to minimise Moscow's advance along the frontline.
Ukraine's armed forces commander, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Tuesday he discussed the military component of Ukraine's victory plan during a phone call with United States Air Force General Charles Quinton Brown Jr.
Mr Syrskyi said he briefed Mr Brown on the battlefield situation and Ukraine's critical weapons and equipment needs ahead of a meeting at the US Ramstein Air Base on October 12.
'Highly likely' North Korean soldiers killed in Donetsk, Seoul defence chief says
Ukraine has been fighting the Russian advance in the Donetsk region since August.
North Korean soldiers are likely fighting in Ukraine alongside Russian troops, with some believed already killed and more expected to be sent, Seoul's defence chief said on Tuesday.
Ukrainian media reported this weekend that six North Korean military officers were killed in a Ukrainian missile attack on Russian-occupied territory near Donetsk on October 3.
Seoul's defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, said it was "highly likely, considering various circumstances" that the report was true.
"We assess that the occurrence of casualties among North Korean officers and soldiers in Ukraine is highly likely, considering various circumstances," he said.
North Korea is expected to send more regular soldiers to support Russia's war effort, he added.
"The issue of deploying regular troops is highly likely due to the mutual agreements that resemble a military alliance between Russia and North Korea," Mr Kim said.
Moscow and Pyongyang have denied that North Korean missiles are being sent to aid Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.
But South Korea claims Pyongyang has sent thousands of containers of weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine.
Ukraine strikes oil depot in occupied Crimea, military says
Kyiv also said on Monday that its forces had struck a large oil terminal overnight on the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
"At night, a successful strike was carried out on the enemy's offshore oil terminal in temporarily occupied Feodosia, Crimea," the Ukrainian military said in a post on social media.
This is a still from footage taken of the Crimea oil depot on fire.
"The Feodosia terminal is the largest in Crimea in terms of transhipment of oil products, which were used, among other things, to meet the needs of the Russian occupation army."
Russian-installed authorities in Crimea said a fire had broken out at an oil facility in the Black Sea port town of some 70,000 people and that there were no casualties.
"To ensure the safety of people living near the scene of the emergency situation, 1,047 people have been temporarily evacuated to shelters," the Russian-appointed mayor of the town of Feodosia, Igor Tkachenko, wrote on Telegram.
On Monday, the fire caused road and train closures, but the Russian consumer safety watchdog said Monday initial checks did not find excess levels of air pollution.
The watchdog said the fire was raging at the Sea Oil Terminal, whose website says it "stores fuel in case of emergency situations and ensures Crimea's energy security".
The fire has spread to "up to 2,500 square metres, a source in the emergency services told RIA Novosti news agency on Tuesday.
The defence ministry said that 12 Ukrainian attack drones had been downed over the peninsula overnight, out of a total of 21 deployed by Kyiv against Russian targets.
Kyiv has ramped up strikes targeting Russia's energy sector in recent months, aiming to dent revenues used by Moscow to fund its invasion — now grinding through its third year.
Russia strikes two civilian ships in Odesa, Ukraine says
The Paresa was reportedly the 20th civilian vessel to be damaged by Russian attacks.
A Russian missile hit a Palau-flagged vessel in Ukraine's southern port of Odesa on Monday, killing a Ukrainian national and injuring five crew members in the second such attack in as many days, officials said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X that the two ships were damaged in the Black Sea grain-export hub without giving details on the ships' conditions.
"We must join forces of all responsible states and organisations to … ensure freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and global food security," he wrote.
Moscow has repeatedly denied it attacks civilian targets.
Odesa regional governor Oleh Kiper, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the man killed in the latest attack was a port worker.
The Paresa's 15-member crew of Syrian and Egyptian nationals was not injured.
"A 60-year-old Ukrainian, an employee of a private cargo handling company, was killed. Five other foreign nationals were injured," he said.
Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba identified the vessel as the Optima and said it arrived in Odesa hours before the attack.
Russia "is attempting in this way to destroy shipping in the Black Sea guaranteeing food security" Mr Kuleba said.
"The consequences can only mean greater instability in sensitive regions dependent on food imports and tension in international relations."
Ukraine's restoration ministry identified the ship attacked on Sunday in the nearby port of Pivdennyi as the Saint Kitts and Nevis-flagged Paresa which had a cargo of 6,000 tonnes of corn.
In a Facebook post, the ministry said the Paresa's 15-member crew of Syrian and Egyptian nationals was not injured.
The ministry said the Paresa was the 20th civilian vessel to be damaged by Russian attacks.
Ukrainian troops responded to Russian strikes in Kherson.
Kyiv earlier said that Russian attacks had killed three civilians overnight — two brothers aged 35 and 38 in the eastern region of Sumy and a 61-year-old woman in the southern Kherson region.
In the city of Kherson — a three-hour drive from the port — the governor said a Russian strike on Monday had wounded at least 22 people and damaged an educational facility and various residential buildings.
While Russian shelling in the southern Kherson region on Tuesday killed one person and injured five more, the regional governor said.
The village of Antonivka came under attack, Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram. Four injured were hospitalised, he added.
Regional prosecutors said on Telegram that Russian troops used artillery to attack the village. A 56-year-old man was killed, they added.
Russia says emergency hotlines with US and NATO remain in place
Russia said on Tuesday that it still had an emergency hotline with the United States and the NATO military alliance to deflate crises as nuclear risks rise amid the Russia-Ukraine war.
Ronald Reagan (right) signs the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev at the White House in 1987.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko, who oversees relations with Europe and NATO, told the state RIA news agency that Moscow perceives the military alliance to be increasing the role of nuclear weapons in its strategy.
Russia, Mr Grushko said, was updating its nuclear doctrine to send a signal "so that our opponents have no illusions about our readiness to ensure the security of the Russian Federation with all available means".
Mr Putin is changing Russia's nuclear doctrine to give Russia a slightly lower threshold for using such weapons in response to an attack with conventional weapons.
A so-called hotline between Moscow and Washington was established in 1963 to reduce the misperceptions that stoked the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 by allowing direct communication between the US and Russian leaders.
After Mr Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, an additional, so-called "deconfliction" line was established between the Russian and US militaries to prevent the war escalating into a US-Russian war.
There is also a Russia-NATO hotline, established in 2013, to reduce misunderstandings in crisis situations.
Reuters/AFP
By：https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-08/russian-forces-advance-on-ukraine-frontline-city/104445914(责任编辑：admin)
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