Russia ‘repels Ukrainian advances in several regions’

Russia's defence ministry yesterday said its forces had repelled efforts by Ukrainian troops to advance in the Donetsk, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, inflicting what it described as significant losses against the enemy.

Russia also said it was continuing air strikes on military and energy targets in Ukraine, using long-range precision-guided weapons.

"The goals of the attacks have been reached. All the assigned targets have been neutralised," the ministry said.

Russia said its forces had held positions during "fierce fighting" in the Kherson region and also inflicted blows on Ukrainian positions in the Donetsk region.

In Ukraine's Kharkiv region, Russia said it destroyed three US-manufactured howitzers and a crossing point on the Oskil River, set up by Ukrainian forces to move reserves and ammunition.

The river flows south into the Siversky Donets, which snakes through the Donbas.

Meanwhile, Russia yesterday said it opened a criminal investigation after gunmen shot dead 11 people at a military training ground near the Ukrainian border.

Russia's RIA news agency, citing the defence ministry, said two gunmen had opened fire during a firearms training exercise on Saturday, targeting a group who had volunteered to fight in Ukraine. The "terrorists" themselves were shot dead, it said.

The incident is the latest blow to President Vladimir Putin's "special military operation" in Ukraine and comes a week after a blast damaged a bridge linking mainland Russia to Crimea, the peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Russia's defence ministry said the attackers were from a former Soviet republic, without elaborating. A senior Ukrainian official, Oleksiy Arestovych, said the two men were from the mainly Muslim, Central Asian republic of Tajikistan and had opened fire on the others after an argument over religion.

In the 24 hours to yesterday morning, Russian forces targeted more than 30 towns and villages across Ukraine, launching five missile and 23 air strikes and up to 60 rocket attacks, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said on Sunday.

In response, Ukraine's air forces carried out 32 strikes, hitting 24 Russian targets.

Fighting has been particularly intense this weekend in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the strategically important Kherson province in the south, three of the four provinces Putin proclaimed as part of Russia last month.

Shelling by Ukrainian forces damaged the administration building in the city Donetsk, capital of the Donetsk region, the head of its Russian-backed administration said yesterday.