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Agencies

The Ukrainian military said it had started a counteroffensive against Russian troops occupying parts of the southern Ukrainian Kherson region.
A weapons depot was targeted in the city of Nova Kakhovka, the Ukrainian military’s southern command said in a Facebook update.
A howitzer and military technology were destroyed and Russian forces lost more than 50 soldiers, according to the Ukrainian side on Monday evening.
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti meanwhile on Tuesday morning reported at least seven were dead, four missing and dozens injured after the attack, citing the pro-Russian leadership installed in Nova Kakhovka.
Many people were buried under rubble and hundreds of homes were damaged, according to the RIA Novosti report. The city’s hydroelectric power plant was not damaged, the report said.
It was not initially possible to independently verify statements from either side.
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Russian sources say a US-supplied HIMARS rocket launcher was used in the Ukrainian attack on Nova Kakhovka. This could not be immediately verified.
“Dozens of homes have been hit … people are being extracted from the rubble,” the head of the city’s Moscow-backed administration, Vladimir Leontiev, said on Telegram.
“There are no military targets here … warehouses were hit, as were shops, a pharmacy, petrol stations and even a church.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24 claiming it was a “special military operation” to demilitarise its neighbour and rid it of dangerous nationalists. Kyiv and the West say it was an imperialist land grab by Putin.


After Putin failed to quickly take the capital Kyiv, his forces turned to the Donbas, where its two provinces Donetsk and Luhansk have been partly controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014.
Putin aims to hand control of the Donbas to the separatists. Attacks on key cities like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk have increased dramatically, killing and wounding scores of civilians weekly.
Russian forces also largely occupy the Kherson region, which lies next to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.
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Russian forces seized the region’s main city, also called Kherson, on March 3. It was the first major city to fall following the start of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine in late February.
Kyiv recently called on civilians to flee as it announced plans to recapture areas that had been lost to Moscow, particularly with the help of weapons supplied by Western nations.
Ukraine’s counter-attack in occupied Kherson came after a Russian rocket attack struck residential buildings in eastern Ukraine. The death toll in that attack on the town of Chasiv Yar rose to 31 on Monday.

The attack late Saturday destroyed three buildings in a residential quarter used mostly by people who work in factories.
Moscow denies targeting civilians but many Ukrainian cities, towns and villages have been left in ruins. Since the February 24 invasion, attacks on a theatre, shopping centre and railway station have caused many civilian deaths.
Russia’s Defence Ministry insisted that the Chasiv Yar target “was a Ukrainian territorial defence brigade, and that “more than 300 nationalists” were killed. The town is also the hometown of Ukraine’s president.
Western nations have pledged more support and military supplies to Ukraine. But Ukraine’s heavy artillery is outnumbered roughly eight to one by Russian guns, putting Ukraine at a significant disadvantage, a spokesman for Ukraine’s International Legion said.
Damien Magrou, spokesman for the unit comprising foreign nationals, told a briefing in Kyiv that more arms from Ukraine’s Western partners were needed to close the gap.
“We’re entering a phase of the war where our disadvantage to the Russian forces in terms of heavy weaponry and artillery is very much being felt,” Magrou said.




He went on to say that the M142 HIMARS multiple rocket launch systems supplied by the United States were having an impact on the battlefield.
“We can see the results already,” he said.
Meanwhile British intelligence experts believe that, due to a lack of fighters on the ground, the Russian army may be turning to “non-traditional recruitment” and that includes inmates from Russian prisons for the Wagner Private Military Company.
The Wagner group is a network of mercenaries, widely described as the private army of Putin. Officially, however, the group does not exist.
“If true, this move likely indicates difficulties in replacing the significant numbers of Russian casualties,” the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in its daily report on Tuesday.
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The Ukrainian secret service has recently said that Russia was recruiting prisoners for paramilitary organisations in view of the high number of losses.
The men were promised early release after fulfilling their contractually agreed duties, the agency said. The information, however could not be independently verified.
The British report added that Russian troops continued to make small incremental territorial gains in the Donetsk region, with Russia claiming to have seized control of the town of Hryhorivka.
“Russian forces are likely maintaining military pressure on Ukrainian forces whilst regrouping and reconstituting for further offensives in the near future,” it said.
dpa, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press


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Ukraine war

Ukraine’s military starts counter-attack in occupied Kherson

Russian forces seized the region’s main city, also called Kherson, on March 3. File photo: AFP

The aftermath of a Russian rocket attack on a residential buildings in Chasiv Yar, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine. Photo: AP

Vladimir Putin expands fast track Russian citizenship to all Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with leaders of the Russian State Duma in Moscow on July 7. Photo: Sputnik via EPA-EFE

Rescuers pull survivors from Ukraine residential building destroyed by Russian strike

Local residents in the Ukraine city of Chasiv Yar watch rescuers search the rubble of a building hit by a missile strike. Photo: Reutets

Ukraine war: Russian military destroys Western weapons amid eastern push

Local residents stand near a shell crater at a children playground, destroyed by Russian military strike, amid Russia’s invasion on Ukraine, in the town of Druzhkivka, in Donetsk region, Ukraine. Photo: Reuters

Lena, 58, reacts near her critically wounded during a Russian military strike, dog Hera, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Kostiantynivka, Ukraine. Photo: Reuters

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Russian forces largely occupy the Kherson region, which lies next to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014
Ukraine shelling and missiles struck Russian military units and an ammunitions depot in the city of Nova Kakhovka



Russian forces largely occupy the Kherson region, which lies next to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.


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