Ukrainian authorities ordered the mandatory evacuation of 37 settlements in an embattled eastern region on August 10 as Kyiv continued to wage its two-month-old counteroffensive in the south and east of the country and Russia and Ukraine each reported downing drones around their respective capital regions overnight.
The Ukrainian side also said a “massive” Russian drone attack destroyed an oil depot in the western region of Rivne and that blasts reached Kyiv and Khmelnytskiy.
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Ukrainian officials announced the mandatory evacuation for 37 settlements in the Kupyansk district of the Kharkiv region amid reports of increased shelling by Russian forces.
Kharkiv regional Governor Oleh Synyehubov said about 11,000 people would be evacuated.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian military reported that about 25 combat clashes took place at the front during the day on August 10. It said Russian forces carried out “unsuccessful offensive actions” in multiple areas around Kupyansk and that Ukrainian forces near Avdiyivsk came under heavy fire but “continue to hold back the advance of the Russian troops.”
According to the command, Russian troops launched three missile and 49 air strikes and fired 36 rocket salvo missiles at Ukrainian positions and populated areas during the day on August 10.
In an earlier update on August 10, Ukraine’s military said its forces were on the offensive in Bakhmut in the east and in Melitopol and Berdyansk in the south.
But it acknowledged “strong resistance” from Russian forces that were “relocating units and troops [and] actively using their reserves.”
In the southern region of Zaporizhzhya, where locals were still recovering from an aerial attack on a residential area on August 9, the Ukrainian General Staff said it was beating back “unsuccessful” Russian offensives.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service on August 10 also announced that the death toll from the Zaporizhzhya bombing had increased to three people, with at least six more injured.
Russia’s Defense Ministry and the mayor of Moscow also reported that Russian forces downed two drones approaching the Russian capital for the second night in a row, with eyewitnesses reporting a fire within kilometers of Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.
The Astra news Telegram channel shared an image it said was of residents huddled near the Domodedovo blaze.
Domodedovo and Vnukovo, another major Moscow airport, reportedly introduced tighter restrictions overnight on incoming aircraft to account for the risk of aerial attacks, causing a handful of minor flight delays.
The Russian Defense Ministry also said it had intercepted two drones near Sevastopol, the city in Russian-occupied Crimea that hosts a Black Sea naval base. It said nine more Ukrainian drones had been destroyed around Crimea after they were jammed and plummeted into the sea.
Ukrainian shelling of the Russian village of Chausy in the Bryansk region bordering Ukraine killed two people and injured two others, said the region’s governor, Aleksandr Bogomaz.
The Russian-backed administration in the southern Ukrainian town of Nova Kakhovka said a civilian had been killed and another wounded in a Ukrainian strike on a business.
Ukrainian officials generally avoid acknowledging responsibility for suspected drone attacks on Russian territory, although they have privately taken credit for a slew of aerial and other strikes well inside Russia since a drone was reportedly destroyed over the Kremlin in May.
More recently, unmanned seaborne drones are also thought to have been used in Ukrainian attacks on a Russian fuel tanker and a Russian Black Sea naval base at Novorossiisk.
Also on August 10, the Ukrainian General Staff said it had destroyed seven of 10 Iranian-made Shahed kamikaze drones that flew into Ukraine from the Kursk region to the northeast in a five-hour span overnight on August 9-10.
The head of the military administration in Rivne, Vitaliy Koval, described a “massive” overnight drone attack that destroyed an oil depot in the region of Dubna but caused no casualties. Explosions were also reported in the Kyiv and Khmelnytsky regions.
RFE/RL cannot confirm claims from either side in the areas of the heaviest fighting.
On The Front Line: Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Yields Small Gains
Kyiv’s forces continue their struggle to break through Russia’s multilayered defenses in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Navy on August 10 announced new “temporary corridors” to and from the country’s Black Sea ports for civilian vessels prepared to accept the risk posed by “a military and mortal danger from the Russian Federation.”
It said the routes “will primarily be used for the possibility of exit of civilian vessels in the Ukrainian ports of Chernomorsk, Odesa, and Pivdenniy.”
A navy spokesman, Oleh Chalyk, told Reuters the corridor would also be for grain and agricultural products, which have been at the center of disputes since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022.
With reporting by Reuters
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