Russian forces ordered to intensify attacks across Ukraine

Russia’s defense minister ordered his forces Saturday to intensify attacks “in all operational sectors” of Ukraine, days after President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia had not “started in earnest yet” its efforts as the war approaches its five-month mark.

As many as 150 civilians have died due to Russian airstrikes in the past two weeks, the Pentagon estimated.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has imposed an air alert across the country as Russia steps up attacks beyond the front lines. About 70% of Russian strikes have targeted nonmilitary infrastructure, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said. Since Friday, missiles have struck residential areas in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, the southern city of Mykolaiv, and the eastern cities of Chuhuiv and Nikopol.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Saturday that the United States had intelligence that Russian officials visited an airfield in Iran twice recently to examine drones they are considering acquiring for the war. The White House released satellite imagery it said showed “attack-capable” unmanned aerial vehicles in flight while a Russian delegation transport plane was at the airfield. Iran had dismissed accusations Friday that it was planning to supply Russia with hundreds of drones as “baseless.”

Missile strikes reported Saturday in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk are the latest in a series of Russian attacks that prompted an air alert to take effect across most of the country.

Rocket attacks on the city of Chuhuiv in the Kharkiv region killed three people – two men in their 60s and a 70-year-old woman – Gov. Oleh Synehubov said on Telegram. Three others were hospitalized, and an apartment building was destroyed, he said.

In the city of Nikopol, on the banks of the Dnipro River, Dnipropetrovsk Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said more than 50 rockets sprayed residential areas. The bodies of two people were pulled from under the rubble of a house, he said, and a woman was hospitalized.

After Russian airstrikes on shopping centers, apartments and other civilian facilities in Ukraine, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Saturday ordered his forces to intensify attacks “in all operational sectors” in Ukraine.

The order was issued nine days after Putin’s July 7 warning that Russia had not “started in earnest yet” in its war against Ukraine.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Shoigu heard reports from the commanders of the southern and central military groups that are leading the war against Ukraine.

The ministry said Shoigu gave the “order to exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime to launch massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents.”

Russian sea-launched Kalibr missile strikes on Vinnytsia, in western Ukraine, killed at least 23 people, including three children. Zelenskyy described the Vinnytsia attack as “an open act of terrorism” and called on the international community to designate Russia a terrorist state.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said Friday that the Vinnytsia missile strike hit a cultural club for military officers, where, it claimed, Ukrainian military officials were meeting with representatives of foreign arms suppliers. It offered no evidence. Earlier, the editor in chief of state-controlled RT, Margarita Simonyan, said the attack targeted “Nazis.”

An air alert was imposed across most of Ukraine late Friday, Zelenskyy said, after the Russian strikes Vinnytsia and university buildings in Mykolaiv.

“Right now, as I am writing this address, the air alert is over almost the entire territory of our state,” Zelenskyy said in a late night address. “We will definitely restore everything they destroyed.”

He said that four people were in critical condition and that four others were missing after a strike on a high-rise office block in Vinnytsia on Thursday injured scores of people and killed three children, according to the country’s state emergency service. Farther south, in the city of Mykolaiv, missiles hit two university facilities Friday, the regional governor said.

“So, I’m begging you, once again: please don’t ignore the air alert signals now,” Zelenskyy told the nation. “Appropriate rules of conduct must be followed at all times. … We still have to fight. And we will fight.”

The Russian strike on an industrial area in Dnipro – Ukraine’s third-most populous city – left at least three dead and 15 people injured, Ukrainian officials said Friday. The attack left cars burning and broke the windows of nearby residential buildings, local officials said.

Ukrainian forces have been successful in repulsing Russian attacks after retreating from the city of Lysychansk earlier this month, Britain’s Defense Ministry said in an intelligence update Saturday. Lysychansk was the last major urban area controlled by Kyiv in Luhansk, the country’s easternmost region.

But the withdrawal has allowed Ukraine’s military to shorten and straighten its defensive positions on the front lines, enabling it to concentrate its forces and fire against Russian advances. This has “been instrumental in reducing Russia’s momentum,” the ministry said.

The Kremlin’s forces have been on an operational pause this week, though they have been launching small-scale offensives across the front lines, according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. They now appear to be emerging from that rest period, the think tank said Friday.

On the diplomatic front, Germany will provide Moldova with $40 million of direct budget support to help the Eastern European country as it grapples with the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“We may not have the power to stop the war in Ukraine today or tomorrow, due to Russia’s brutality. But we do have the means to help a democratic country to prevent it from being crushed by the effects of this war,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock tweeted Friday after a conference in Bucharest, Romania, in support of Moldova.

The aid plan, which Baerbock described as “a direct grant to support the poorest families” in the country, will go to Germany’s parliament for approval, she told the conference. She said Moldova, which neighbors Ukraine and is hosting an influx of that country’s refugees, was feeling the “economic shock waves” of the conflict, including rising inflation and the disruption of its supply chains.

Fears of a spillover from the war also grew in Moldova earlier this year when explosions were reported in its Russian-affiliated breakaway region of Transnistria and a Russian commander suggested that Moscow aimed to create a pathway there through southern Ukraine.