Ukraine claims bridge strike in Kherson region as Russia shells residential areas - Action News
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Ukraine claims bridge strike in Kherson region as Russia shells residential areas

Russia's military shelled residential areas across Ukraine overnight, claiming gains, as Ukrainian forces pressed a counteroffensive, striking the last working bridge over a river in the Russian-occupied Kherson region, Ukrainian authorities said Saturday.

Russian military claims control of village of Pisky, but Ukraine military says fighting continues

Valentyna Kondratieva, 75, stands inside her damaged home in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Saturday, where she was hurt in a Russian rocket attack the night before. (David Goldman/The Associated Press)

Russia's military pounded residential areas across Ukraine overnight asUkrainian forces pressed a counteroffensive to try to take back an occupied southern region, striking the last working bridge over a river in the Russian-occupied Kherson region, Ukrainian authorities said Saturday.

A Russian rocket attack on Kramatorsk killed three people and wounded 13 on Friday night, according to the mayor. The city is the headquarters for Ukrainian forces in thewar-torn east.

The attack came less than a day after 11 other rockets were fired at the city, one of the two main Ukrainian-held ones in Donetsk province, the focus of aRussian offensive to capture Eastern Ukraine's Donbas region.

A crater from a rocket attack Friday night is seen next to damaged homes in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Saturday. (David Goldman/The Associated Press)

The Russian Defence Ministry claimed Saturday its forces had taken control of Pisky, a village on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk, the provincial capital that pro-Moscow separatists have claimed since 2014.

But Ukraine's military command later said in a Facebook post that "fierce fightingcontinues" in the area.

Volodymyr Parshyn cleans up debris from a rocket strike on his son's home in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Friday. (David Goldman/The Associated Press)

Ukrainesays advance on 2 small citiesprevented

Russian troops and the Kremlin-backed rebels are seeking to seize Ukrainian-held areas north and west of the city of Donetsk to expand the separatists' self-proclaimed republic.

But the Ukrainian military said Saturday its forces had prevented an overnight advance toward the smaller cities of Avdiivka and Bakhmut.

A local resident rides a bicycle past a fragment of a rocket embedded in the ground following a rocket attack in the town of Bakhmut, Ukraine, on Friday. (Anataloii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images)

Russian Defence Ministry spokespersonIgor Konashenkov also claimed that Russian strikes near Kramatorsk, 120 kilometres north of Donetsk city, destroyed a U.S.-supplied multiple rocket launcher and ammunition. Ukrainian authorities didn'tacknowledge any military losses, but said Russian missile strikes Friday on Kramatorsk had destroyed 20 residential buildings.

Neither claim could be independently verified.

The Ukrainian governor of neighbouring Luhansk province, which is part of the fight over the Donbas region and was overrun by Russian forces last month, claimed Ukrainian troops still held a small area.

Writing on Telegram, Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai said the defending troops remained holed up inside an oil refinery on the edge of Lysychansk, a cityMoscow claimed to have captured, and also control areas near a village.

A Ukrainian soldier prepares to fire a howitzer near a front line in Ukraine's Mykolaiv region on Saturday. (Oleksandr Ratushniak/Reuters)

"The enemy is burning the ground at the entrances to the Luhansk region because it cannot overcome (Ukrainian resistance along) these few kilometres," Haidai said. "It is difficult to count how many thousands of shells this territory of the free Luhansk region has withstood over the past month and a half."

Shelling reported in Nikopol

Further west, Dnipropetrovsk region's governor reported more Russian shelling of Nikopol, a city across the Dnieper River from Europe's largest nuclear power plant.

Yevhen Yevtushenko did not specify whether Russian troops had fired at Nikopol from the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.On Telegram, he wroteSaturday there were no casualties, but residential buildings, a power line and a gas pipeline were damaged.

Ukrainian soldiers carry the coffin of a fellow soldier during a funeral at Bucha's cemetery in the Kyiv region on Saturday. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images)

Nikopol has undergone daily bombardment much of the past week, and a volley of shells killed three people and damaged 40 apartment buildings on Thursday, Yevtushenkosaid.

Russian and Ukrainian officials have for days accused each other of shelling the Zaporizhzhia plant in contravention of nuclear safety rules. Russian troops have occupied the plant since the early days of Moscow's invasion, although the facility's pre-war Ukrainian nuclear workers continue to run it.

Ukrainian military intelligence alleged Saturday that Russian troops were shelling the plant from a village just kilometres away, damaging a plant pumping station and a fire station. The intelligence directorate said the Russians had bused people into the power plant and mounted a Ukrainian flag on a self-propelled gun on the outskirts of Enerhodar, the city where the plant is located.

"Obviously, it will be used for yet another provocation to accuse the armed forces of Ukraine," the directorate said, without elaborating.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly alleged Russian forces were cynically using the plant as a shield while firing at communities across the river, knowing that Ukrainian forces were unlikely to fire back for fear of triggering a nuclear accident.

They said Russian shelling on Friday night killed one woman and injured two othercivilians in the city of Zaporizhzhia, which is a straight distance of about 53 kilometresfrom the plant. Ukraine's southern Mykolayiv region also said a woman died there in shelling.

For several weeks, Ukraine's military has reportedly tried to lay the groundwork for a counter-offensive to reclaim southern Ukraine's Russian-occupied Kherson region.

Communal service workers work in a crater following a missile strike on the second largest Ukrainian city, Kharkiv, on Saturday during the Russian invasion. (AFP/Getty Images)

A local Ukrainian official reported Saturday that a Ukrainian strike had damaged the last working bridge over the Dnieper River in the region and further crippled Russian supply lines.

"The Russians no longer have any capability to fully turn over their equipment," Serhii Khlan, a deputy to the Kherson Regional Council, wrote on Facebook. His claims could not be immediately verified.

The British Defence Ministry said Saturday that damage to bridges across the Dnieper means "ground resupply for the several thousand Russian troops on the west bank is almost certainly reliant on just two pontoon ferry crossing points."

"Even if Russia manages to make significant repairs to the [damaged]bridges, they will remain a key vulnerability," the ministrysaid.

Ukrainian soldiers ride a tank on a road in the Donetsk region on Saturday. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images)

Missile strike damages hydropowerplant

On Saturday, an official atthe Russian-controlled Kakhovka hydropower plant 60 kilometresupriver from the city of Kherson said one of its generating units was out of service after a Ukrainian missile strike, warningfurther strikes could endanger the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant because its water intakes use the reservoir formed by the Kakhovka plant's dam.

Days after explosions at a Russian airbase in Crimea destroyed up to a dozen aircraft, a Ukrainian presidential adviser said Kyiv should make retaking the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow seized more than eight years ago one of its war aims.

A child walks in Kramatorsk on Saturday on a street where homes were damaged hours earlier by a Russian rocket attack. (David Goldman/The Associated Press)

"Russia started a war against Ukraine and the world in 2014, with its brazen seizure of Crimea. It is obvious that this war should end with the liberation of Crimea," Mykhailo Podoylak, head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office, wrote Saturday on Twitter.

Ukrainian officials have not claimed responsibility for the explosions at the Saki airbase on Tuesday. Russian defence officials denied any aircraft were damaged,or that any attack took place, and attributed the blasts to the sparking of onsite munitions.

With files from Reuters