Russia advances in Ukraine, launches deadly airstrikes
KYIV—Russia on Sunday said its forces had advanced in eastern Ukraine, as Kyiv reported deadly air attacks and urged the West to allow it to carry out more retaliatory strikes inside Russia.
Russian attack drones flying towards Ukraine also breached the airspace of Nato members Romania and Latvia, the countries said on Sunday, triggering calls for a robust response from the military alliance.
Moscow has stepped up its aerial attacks in recent weeks, but it is also trying to fight off a major Ukrainian cross-border offensive into its western Kursk region, which has reshaped the course of the two-and-a-half-year war.
Kyiv launched its Kursk offensive on Aug. 6 hoping to force Russia to redeploy troops pressing forward in the east of the country. But Moscow has appeared to intensify its attacks there, chalking up its most significant territorial gains in almost two years over the month of August.
And on Sunday, its military claimed to have captured another small village on the route towards the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region.
‘Liberated’
Russia’s defense ministry said its troops had “liberated the settlement of Novohrodivka,” which lies around 20 kilometers from Pokrovsk.
The town is one of Russia’s larger territorial conquests of recent weeks, home to more than 14,000 inhabitants before Moscow launched its full-scale offensive in February 2022.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week his main aim in Ukraine after 30 months of fighting was to capture the eastern Donbas area, which includes Donetsk.
He claimed that Ukraine’s Kursk counteroffensive had made that easier.
Moscow drew fresh condemnation on Sunday after its drones were detected in Latvia and Romania, both Nato and EU members.
A “Russian military drone … crashed in the eastern part of Latvia yesterday. There is an ongoing investigation,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said on X, formerly Twitter.
Romania said a Russian attack drone targeting civilian infrastructure in Ukraine overnight had entered its airspace.
“Nato must respond to the fact that Russian ‘Shaheds’ feel free to fly in the airspace of European countries. They need to be shot down,” Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, said on Telegram, referring to the Iranian-style self-detonating drones.
Zelensky himself on Sunday also urged Kyiv’s partners to give him more scope to use Western-supplied weapons against targets inside Russia.
