Russian forces have carried out 23 combined strikes on Ukrainian targets in the past week, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.
The attacks, which took place between June 29 and July 5, involved both “high precision weapons” and drones, the ministry said in a statement on Friday.
They hit Ukrainian airfields, as well as energy infrastructure used to power the country’s military-industrial complex. Sites where Kiev’s missiles were being stored and prepared for launch were also successfully targeted.
Russian missiles and UAVs also destroyed fuel depots used for Ukrainian hardware, and assembly shops for aerial drones and unmanned boats, the ministry added.
Moscow reported several major strikes in Ukraine during the past week, including an attack on the Mirgorod airfield in Poltava Region on Tuesday, in which five of Kiev’s Su-27 fighter jets were destroyed and two others damaged.
During the past week, Russian air-defense systems shot down two Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29s and one Su-27 jet, five US-supplied ATACMS missiles, 14 Storm Shadow cruise missiles that had been donated by Britain, 42 rockets for US-made HIMARS, and Czech-made Vampire systems, as well as 451 drones of various types, the statement read.
The total losses incurred by the Ukrainian military over the past seven days have reached up to 13,500 servicemen, according to the defense ministry. The most intense fighting apparently took place in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), where more than 7,700 Ukrainian troops were killed or severely wounded.
In the DPR, the villages of Spornoe, Shumy, Novoaleksandrovka, and Novopokrovskoe, as well as the Novy district of the strategic town of Chasov Yar, have been “liberated,” the ministry said.
In Ukraine’s Kharkov Region, Russian forces took control of the settlement of Stepovaya Novoselovka, it added.
Moscow launched its offensive in the northeastern Kharkov Region in early May in response to frequent cross-border strikes by Kiev’s forces on civilian targets in Russia’s Belgorod Region. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the goal of the operation is to establish a buffer zone that will make further Ukrainian attacks impossible.