Ukraine reports more attacks as Russians take village

| February 20, 2023

Russia appeared to step up its fight against Ukraine, with the Russian military reporting it had captured another village and the Ukrainian government reporting a new barrage of Russian missile attacks, resulting in fresh power outages.

The Russians said they had captured another village in the Kharkiv region in north-eastern Ukraine.

“In the Kupyansk region, the village of Hryanykivka in the Kharkiv region was completely liberated by offensive actions of the Army Group West,” said the spokesperson of the Defence Ministry in Moscow, Igor Konashenkov, on Saturday.

Russian troops suffered a big defeat in the region last autumn and had to withdraw almost completely from the area.

Meanwhile air raid alerts that had sounded across the country on Friday night were lifted on Saturday morning.

Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidential office in Kiev, said missiles were fired by aircraft in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

As a precautionary measure to prevent further damage, electricity has been cut off in the capital Kiev and its surrounding area, as well as in the industrial area of Dnipropetrovsk and in the Black Sea region of Odessa, said the energy provider DTEK.

At least two missiles were reported in the Khmelnytskyi region in the west of the country.

“An explosion was heard in Khmelnytskyi. Stay under cover,” military governor Serhiy Hamaliy warned people on his Telegram channel.

Shortly afterwards, he reported a second explosion.

The military governor of the Black Sea region of Mykolaiv, Vitaliy Kim, showed a photo of an alleged Russian missile on his Telegram channel. He warned that two missiles had flown over the region to the west.

The Ukrainian armed forces also reported that two Russian Kalibr cruise missiles had been fired from ships belonging to the Russian Black Sea Fleet.