Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised Friday evening the "heroism" of his troops engaged in "hard fighting", when according to Moscow they launched their offensive towards the east, bypassing the southern basin of the Dnieper river massively flooded by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.
"To our soldiers, to all those who are engaged in particularly hard fighting these days: We are witnesses of your heroism, and we are grateful for every minute of your life," Mr. Zelensky quipped in the evening in his daily video message.
The Ukrainian president, conforming to the attitude adopted for weeks by officials in kyiv, did not mention a counter-offensive or even a specific military operation.
"We focus our attention on all the places where our actions are required and where the enemy can be defeated," he said.
But, while the Russian army claimed to have repelled several waves of Ukrainian attacks in recent days, including armored vehicles, in particular in the Zaporizhia region (south-east) above the dam and the flooded area, the Kremlin has affirmed that it was the counter-offensive, so often evoked, of the Ukrainians, and that it had been put in check.
"We can say that this offensive has begun," President Vladimir Putin said in a video posted on Telegram.
According to him, the Ukrainian troops at this stage "have not achieved their objective on any of the battlefields", but still have a vast "offensive potential" fueled by the modern armaments delivered by the West.
These were further increased on Friday by the United States, which announced a further $2 billion in military aid, mostly air defense equipment and ammunition.
The Russian Ministry of Defense detailed that "over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian forces have continued their attempts to carry out offensives in the Yuzhno-Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions", either to the east and to the south -est, ensuring that these had been defeated.
For many observers, the fighting in the southeast attests that "the Ukrainian counter-offensive has begun", sums up the American think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
The Ukrainian army could seek in this region to cut the Russian logistics lines running from north to south along the Sea of Azov, and isolate the south and Crimea.
In recent weeks, Ukraine appeared to test Russian positions along the front line from south to east, a way experts say to prepare for an assault to retake occupied territories, including annexed Crimea in 2014.
In the southern regions of Kherson and Mykolaiv, flooding caused by Tuesday's destruction of the Kakhovka dam killed at least 13 people: eight in areas under Russian occupation, and five in those under Ukrainian control, where the authorities are also state of 13 missing.
Both sides blame each other for the destruction of the dam. But the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, ruled on Friday that "everything seemed to indicate" that Russia was responsible.
The Norwegian seismological institute Norsar said on Friday that it had detected, from a Romanian station, a powerful "explosion" at the location of the dam when it broke, confirming the idea that the hydroelectric dam, located in an area under Russian control, did not relent due to bombing damage in previous months as claimed by Russia.
"We are sure there was an explosion," Ben Dando, a Norsar section chief, told AFP.
According to this independent seismological research institute, the explosion occurred at 2:54 a.m. local time, on a site whose coordinates correspond to that of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper.
Its magnitude is "between 1 and 2", said Norsar, which has not yet calculated its equivalent in tonnes of TNT, which requires integrating many factors.
"It's not a weak explosion," Dando said.
Ukraine accused Russia on Tuesday of having mined the engine room of the dam and of having deliberately dynamited it, flooding a basin of some 600 km2 up to the Black Sea, devastated and impassable including for Ukrainian armored vehicles. .
In the flooded areas, everyone watches the evolution of the water level.
"According to forecasts, the rising waters may last another 10 days," Vladimir Saldo, head of the Russian-occupied part of the Kherson 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.
On the other side of the river, "35 localities are still flooded on the right bank but the water is gradually receding," said Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Ukrainian administration in the region, in the evening.
In Kherson, the city on the right bank of the Dnieper, "the level was 5.38 meters this morning, and in the evening it had dropped to about 5 meters", he added, on Telegram messaging.
"The Russians continue to terrorize Kherson," he said again, reporting two injuries.
09/06/2023 22:40:34 - Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
