Russian forces make renewed push to take towns in eastern Ukraine

At least three civilians have been killed and others wounded across Ukraine as Russian forces continued to shell frontline areas and other parts of the country, local Ukrainian officials reported.

A man died as Russian forces shelled the Ukrainian-held town of Nikopol from their stronghold at Ukraine’s largest nuclear plant, according to Ukrainian local governor Serhii Lysak.

Mr Lysak said that emergency services in Nikopol were working to assess the damage.

Russian troops took over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant early in the war, sparking intermittent fears of a radiation incident as shelling persisted near the site, often targeting Ukrainian-controlled settlements across the Dnieper River.

In Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown in central Ukraine, a 60-year-old man died on Friday evening when a Russian missile slammed into an industrial facility, according to Telegram posts by Mayor Oleksandr Vilkul.

Mr Vilkul added that the man’s wife was taken to hospital with serious shrapnel wounds.

Early on Saturday, Mr Vilkul reported that Russian missiles and drones overnight hit the same site again, causing unspecified damage and sparking a fire that was put out by morning.

Mr Vilkul did not elaborate on the site’s nature or whether it was linked to Ukraine’s war effort. He said nobody was hurt in the second strike.

Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov later told reporters that Russian forces destroyed the Ukrainian military’s fuel and ammunition depots near Kryvyi Rih’s local airport.

In Ukraine’s frontline Kherson region to the south, one civilian was killed and another wounded as Russian forces launched “mass shelling” attacks, governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported on Saturday.

In a Telegram post, Mr Prokudin said that Russian troops used mortars, artillery, tanks, drones, and multiple-rocket launchers to target the province, striking some residential areas.

Russian shelling over the past day also wounded one civilian in the frontline city of Avdiivka, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, acting local governor Ihor Moroz reported on Saturday.

Avdiivka has been fiercely contested by Russian and Ukrainian forces over the past weeks as Kyiv’s forces try to hold off waves of Russian attacks.

Mr Moroz said that exploding drones, missiles, mortars and artillery shells fired by Russian troops also struck other parts of the province.

Russian troops on Friday launched a fresh offensive north of Avdiivka that has secured minor gains, according to an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War.

Moscow’s renewed push near Avdiivka reflects the Russian military command’s commitment to offensive operations in the area “despite heavy materiel and personnel losses”, the institute said.

The Ukrainian General Staff on Friday claimed that Ukrainian forces had damaged and destroyed almost 50 Russian tanks and more than 100 armoured vehicles in the fighting near Avdiivka during the previous day. The claim that could not be independently verified.

Oleksandr Shputun, a spokesman for the Ukrainian army unit fighting near Avdiivka, said in televised remarks that Russian military activity in the area had “decreased slightly”, possibly due to heavy losses. However, Mr Shputun acknowledged that Russian units continued to advance.

In the north-eastern Kharkiv region, a 39-year-old civilian man was taken to hospital with wounds as Russian shelling hit two village homes near the embattled town of Kupiansk, governor Oleh Syniehubov reported.

Russian forces have for weeks been pressing an offensive to retake territory near Kupiansk and the nearby town of Lyman.

The governor of Russia’s southern Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces shelled two of the province’s districts with mortars and grenade launchers the previous day. According to govenor Vyacheslav Gladkov, no civilians were hurt.

Elsewhere, a top Ukrainian presidential adviser reported that four Ukrainian children who were released from Russian captivity on Monday have been reunited with their families.

According to the Telegram post by Andriy Yermak, a 17-year-old girl and three boys aged nine, six and three, were captured by occupying Russian forces in southern and eastern Ukraine.

Mr Yermak said one of the boys was transferred to an orphanage in southern Russia, while another was forcibly taken to Russian-annexed Crimea.

Deportations of Ukrainian children have been a concern since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The International Criminal Court increased pressure on Moscow when it issued arrest warrants in March for President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of abducting children from Ukraine.

State media in Kremlin-allied Belarus have also published reports on children arriving in the country from Ukraine’s occupied territories, ostensibly to join “health recuperation programmes”.