WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Russia knocked out most infrastructure in Ukraine's Pokrovsk, local official says
Russia knocked out around 80% of critical infrastructure in the town of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub in Ukraine's east, as Moscow's troops inched forward, a local official said on Friday.
Serhiy Dobriak, Pokrovsk's military administration head, said Russian forces were at about 7 km (4 miles) from the town, which is at an intersection of roads and a railway that makes it an important logistics point for the military and for civilians in the eastern Donetsk region.
Russia forces have focused some of their heaviest assaults in recent weeks on Pokrovsk, which could allow it to consolidate and advance the front line in the region.
"The enemy is leaving us without power, without water, without gas. Prepares us for the winter, so to say," Dobriak said on national television.
Some 13,050 residents remain in the town and Ukrainian officials are pressing on with an evacuation plan that has been going on for some weeks. Just a month and a half ago, the town hosted more than 48,000 people, he said.
Russia continued to pummel the town on Thursday, launching a total of nine glide bombs and injuring four people in two attacks which damaged infrastructure, Dobriak said.
He said the daily attacks targeted energy facilities and other vital infrastructure. Almost half of Pokrovsk, 10 nearby villages and one smaller town were without power, he said, adding the energy infrastructure was "almost impossible to repair".
He put the level of the destruction at about four fifths of the town's critical infrastructure.
Russia denies targeting civilian infrastructure.
More than 31 months since Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukrainian forces are on the defensive and Kyiv ordered the pullout of its troops from Vuhledar, another town in the east. Kyiv's top commander this week ordered defences strengthened on the eastern front.
In a Friday morning report on the battlefield situation, Ukraine's military said that its forces repelled 30 attacks on the Pokrovsk front over the past day as Russia pushed towards the villages of Mykolaivka and Selydove.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Russian military targets Ukrainian position in powerful strike – MOD
A successful missile strike hit the position of a company-sized Ukrainian tactical unit not far from the Russian border, the defense ministry in Moscow announced on Friday. The Russian military also published a video showing the moment of the strike.
Black-and-white footage apparently taken from a drone hovering over the area at first showed some vehicles moving along a road towards a small wooded area amid fields. The location is then struck by a Russian missile, with a powerful blast rocking the area. Around a dozen burning objects can then be seen at the target location after the strike.
According to the defense ministry, 12 armored vehicles as well as five pickup trucks were destroyed and some 80 Ukrainian soldiers eliminated in the attack. Kiev has not commented on the development.
The attack was carried out using an Iskander-M missile system, the statement said. According to Russian media, the strike targeted an area near the village of Frunzenka in the Ukrainian northeastern Sumy Region. Frunzenka is located less than about ten miles (15 km) away from the Russian border.
Sumy Region borders Russia’s Kursk Region, where Kiev’s troops launched an incursion in early August. They made some initial progress but were eventually stopped, according to the Russian defense ministry. Russian troops have since been successfully preventing any further advance by the Ukrainian military and also managed to win back some territory, along with a dozen settlements close to the border. Fighting in the region continues.
Ukrainian officials have stated that the main goals of the incursion were to sway public opinion in Russia and to gain a better bargaining position ahead of possible peace talks with Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow has never ruled out negotiations, but only after all Ukrainian forces have left Russian territory.
Earlier on Friday, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Aleksandr Bortnikov, said that Ukraine’s Kursk operation has failed to distract Russia from its successful offensive in Donbass.
Ukraine has lost almost 20,000 soldiers in the incursion, according to the Russian defense ministry’s estimates.
Reuters/RT