Here is an update on the military situation on the 128th day of the war based on information from AFP journalists on site, official Ukrainian and Russian statements, Western sources, analysts and international organizations.
– Missiles in the South –
According to the Ukrainian emergency services, two missiles were fired overnight from Thursday to Friday by a “strategic aircraft” from the Black Sea against buildings in the Odessa region. Still provisional, “the toll is 19 dead and 38 injured, including six children,” said Serguiï Krouk, head of the national emergency service of Ukraine.
The first strike “hit a nine-storey residential building in the Bilgorod-Dniester region”, about 80 km southwest of Odessa, according to the spokesman for the administration of the region, Serguiï Bratchouk. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov assured that his forces were not targeting “civilian targets”.
“Ukrainian efforts have not led to major gains in the region” of Zaporrijia, where “we observe an enhancement of Russian positions”, underlines a source from the general staff of the French armies. As for the Kherson region, occupied by Russian forces and their separatist allies, it remains “contested militarily and politically and the Ukrainian armed forces continue to target Russian military sites”.
The Ukrainian army said it had hit “a concentration of enemy troops and military equipment” near the town of Bilozerka, reporting “35 dead” among Russian soldiers and destroyed enemy armor.
Fighting continues around Lyssytchansk, the last major city yet to be conquered by the Russians in the Lugansk region, one of the two provinces of the Donbass industrial basin, which Moscow intends to fully control.
According to the British Ministry of Defence, Russian forces “claim to have seized the village of Pryvillia”, northwest of the city. “Intense fighting continues, probably to seize the heights around (its) oil refinery,” London adds in its daily note.
Same reading of the situation for the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), based in Washington: “Russian troops are probably trying to cross the northeast corner of the refinery in order to advance towards Lyssychansk from the refinery “.
But for the general staff of the French armies, if “the Russian forces exert very strong pressure on Lyssytchansk”, they do not threaten “at this stage the overall cohesion of the Ukrainian defensive system in the Donbass”. However, “we observe a reinforcement of Russian armored capacities, an intensification of aviation support and strikes on the rear of the Ukrainian forces”.
The ISW also refers to the efforts made by Russian troops to regain control of localities north of the city of Kharkiv (northeast). Its governor Oleg Sinegoubov reported four dead and three injured in the past 24 hours in the region (three dead and two injured in Izium, one dead and one injured in Chuhouiv).
– “Isolation” –
The day after the announcement of the Russians’ departure from Serpents’ Island, the British Ministry of Defense judged this withdrawal “probably” motivated by “the isolation of the garrison and its growing vulnerability to Ukrainian strikes and not in sign of goodwill”, as affirmed by Moscow on Thursday.
– Tens of thousands dead –
There is no overall assessment of the civilian victims of the conflict. On the military level, Western security sources now evoke 15,000 to 20,000 Russian soldiers killed. Ukrainian forces are losing around 100 soldiers every day, according to kyiv.
No independent figures are available.
– Displaced persons and refugees –
More than six million Ukrainians are internally displaced, according to a new count on Tuesday from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
In addition, “nearly 16 million people in Ukraine today need humanitarian aid: in water, food, health services”, estimated Thursday Osnat Lubrani, the UN humanitarian coordinator in the country.
They join the more than 5.2 million Ukrainians registered as refugees in other European states since the start of the conflict on February 24.
