KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian air defenses thwarted a nighttime barrage of 39 Ukrainian drones over five of the country’s regions, Russian authorities said Monday, while Kyiv officials said the Kremlin’s forces made a new push to overwhelm battlefield defenses on the front line in eastern Ukraine.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the drones were “intercepted and destroyed” in regions bordering Ukraine as well as in the Leningrad region roughly 700 kilometers (430 miles) north of the Ukrainian border. A power plant, a bridge and a power line were damaged by drone debris, it said.
Ukraine has employed high technology in its campaign of increasingly ambitious drone strikes deep inside Russia that target critical infrastructure in an attempt to make the war that is now in its third year more costly for Moscow and hinder its war machine.
Russian troops, meanwhile, are intensifying their weekslong drive to breach Ukrainian defenses around Pokrovsk, a town of around 60,000 people before the war, the Ukrainian General Staff said Monday.
Russia launched 52 attacks there over the previous 24 hours — almost twice the daily number in recent weeks, it said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy late Sunday described the situation in the Donetsk region, which includes Pokrovsk, as “extremely challenging.”
Russia’s strategy of attritional warfare, with powerful glide bombs pulverizing Ukrainian defensive positions before infantry move in, has brought incremental gains for the Kremlin as it seeks a big breakthrough that has eluded it since capturing Avdiivka in February.
Ukraine is significantly outgunned by Russia’s bigger army on the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line.
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