Zelenskyy Appoints New Commanders for Donetsk Defense as Conflict Intensifies

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appointed two of Ukraine’s most prominent commanders to oversee and strengthen defences of the “fortress belt” of industrialised cities in the Donetsk region. Visiting the frontline, Zelenskyy said Third Army Corps leader Andrii Biletskyi and Denys Prokopenko, commander of the First Corps Azov, would head new groupings. Both units are known for embracing Nato-style doctrine and new technology.

Russian forces are putting pressure on the cities of Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – all critical strongholds for Ukraine. According to open-source mapping group Deep State, Moscow’s troops have been infiltrating deeper into Kostiantynivka, with the Ukrainians weeding them out from houses, basements and ruins. Russia was also stepping up its air and artillery attacks on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk to prepare for a targeted offensive on those cities, Deep State said.

Ukrainian military analyst Mykola Bielieskov told Reuters the appointments were “the right move” in giving Ukraine’s new commander in chief, Mykhailo Drapatyi, greater scope for strategic planning. His predecessor, the “Soviet-era” general Oleksandr Syrskyi, was criticised for micromanagement. Ukrainian drone forces commander Robert Brovdi, a leader of Kyiv’s mid and long-range strike campaigns, praised the appointments as an important step towards “network-centric warfare … This is exactly what ‘Smart War’ is,” he posted.

Ukraine hit 16 sites in Russia over the past day including oil facilities and logistics, Zelenskyy said on Wednesday. The targets also included airfields, a missile unit, a military enterprise and infrastructure that Moscow uses to launch attacks against Ukraine. Ukraine’s military general staff said its forces struck a Lukoil refinery overnight in Kstovo, in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, setting it on fire. The refinery can process 125m barrels annually. Long-range Ukrainian drones burned a Wildberries warehouse to the ground in the Tambov region south-east of Moscow, Russian authorities said on Wednesday.

A Russian guided aerial bomb attack seriously damaged a combined heat and power plant in Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson, the plant’s owner, Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz, said on Wednesday. The extent of the damage would be assessed as soon as the security situation allowed, Naftogaz said.

There were explosions in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv early on Thursday, a Reuters witness said. Around the same time, Russia attacked an industrial facility in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih with ballistic missiles, injuring two people, said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city’s defence council. It came after Bloomberg reported that Russia was considering stepping up its ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv, including targets in the city centre, and on critical infrastructure elsewhere in Ukraine after concluding that efforts to negotiate a peace deal had reached a dead end. While Ukraine has repeatedly offered ceasefires and negotiations, the Kremlin has not altered its demands – chief among which is total control of Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has awarded Ukraine’s Order of Freedom to Elon Musk, whose SpaceX has provided Starlink satellite internet to Ukraine’s military. Musk has restricted its use over Russian territory – a policy Zelenskyy hopes to change so that Ukrainian weapons can use Starlink to navigate to their targets.

Ukraine freed 10 Russian prisoners of war, Russia’s human rights commissioner said on Wednesday. On Monday, Russia released 10 Ukrainian prisoners of war who were previously thought to be missing.

A pro-Russian hacker group on Wednesday claimed responsibility for a cyber-attack on Digdir, the Norwegian government’s digital services agency. The denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks tried to overwhelm the agency’s computers to block services, including one that enables citizens to use one login across multiple public services. A Digdir spokesperson said the agency still managed to keep the services running “practically all the time”. The pro-Russian hacker group Server Killers said it attacked because Norway renewed its security cooperation with Ukraine on 23 August.