"Active fighting" is raging Friday in the Zaporizhia region of southern Ukraine, according to a Russian occupation official, observers seeing the beginnings of an expected counter-offensive from Kiev, which remains of its silent side on this operation.
"At present, active fighting has resumed in the region between Orekhovo (the Russian name of Orikhiv, editor's note) and Tokmak", at the level of the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces, Vladimir Rogov indicated on Telegram , without giving further details.
According to Alexander Sladkov, a correspondent for Russian public television who runs a Telegram channel followed by more than a million people, the Russian and Ukrainian "artillery" is at work, the Kiev troops being, according to him, at the 'offensive.
“Long and hard fights are underway,” he wrote in the morning. "The enemy is making incredible efforts, (leads) attacks. In vain. Ours are holding. The front line is preserved," he assured, unverifiable claims from independent sources at this stage.
The day before, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that his men had repelled a Ukrainian offensive in the Zaporizhia region overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, without giving a specific location.
According to Dmitry Rogozin, a senior Russian official, the Moscow army "repelled the first attack". "But the enemy has not yet introduced its main forces", he tempered, while Ukraine would have gathered "600 tanks" in the area according to him.
"The Ukrainian counter-offensive has begun", believe many observers, including the American analysis center Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which specifies that it does not expect "a single major operation" but several coordinated actions. .
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar said for her part that the "epicenter" of the fighting remained "the east" of the country, remaining evasive about southern Ukraine. "The enemy is carrying out defensive actions in the Zaporizhia sector. Positional fighting is continuing there," she commented.
According to observers, the Ukrainian army could seek, in this region, to attempt a breakthrough towards Tokmak, in occupied territory 40 km south of Orikhiv, an important logistical node for the Russian forces.
But the Ukrainian general staff maintains the vagueness on its strategy whereas its army is from now on equipped with modern Western equipment.
In recent weeks, Ukraine has appeared to test Russian positions along the front line, from south to east, a way experts say to fuel uncertainty before launching an assault to retake territories occupied by Russia, including Crimea annexed in 2014.
Moscow swears for its part that it wants to take the whole of the Donbass in the east of the country.
On the Russian side of the border, three people were slightly injured on Friday when a drone fell on a building in Voronezh, some 200 km from the border with Ukraine.
Russia has been the target for weeks of an increasing number of drone attacks that Moscow blames on Ukrainian forces.
In the regions of Kherson and Mykolaiv, the floods caused by the destruction on Tuesday of the Kakhovka dam killed at least 13 people: eight in the areas under Russian occupation, and five in those under Ukrainian control, where the authorities also report 13 missing.
"According to forecasts, the rising waters may last another 10 days," Vladimir Saldo, head of the occupied part of the region, said on Telegram.
"The water has already entered the houses and the streets. Every two hours, I go out to see if the water continues to rise," Tatyana Ioenko, a resident of Chornobaivka, told AFP.
In the city of Kherson itself, the water level nevertheless began to drop "for the first time" since Tuesday, according to Laura Moussiïane, of the local meteorological agency.
"For hundreds of thousands of people in many towns and villages, access to drinking water is severely hampered", worried Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Telegram, the day after a trip to the area.
The dam's water level "has dropped by 4.7m" since Tuesday, the dam's Ukrainian operator Ukrhydroenergo warned, but according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Thursday evening, it continues to cool the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, located 150 km upstream.
kyiv and Moscow accused each other of the destruction of the dam, then of strikes on the areas where evacuation operations are taking place in Kherson.
The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, ruled on Friday that "everything seemed to indicate" that Russia was behind the destruction of this infrastructure.
Norway, for its part, announced the release of 13 million euros for southern Ukraine.
06/09/2023 13:33:40 - Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
