A local resident rides his bicycle along a deserted street in the city of Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Oct. 1.GENYA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images
KYIV – Russia knocked out around 80 per cent of critical infrastructure in the town of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub in Ukraine’s east, as Moscow’s troops inched forward, a local official said on Friday.
Serhiy Dobriak, Pokrovsk’s military administration head, said Russian forces were about 7 km from the town, which is at an intersection of roads and a railway that makes it an important logistics point for the military and for civilians in the eastern Donetsk region.
Russian forces have focused some of their heaviest assaults in recent weeks on Pokrovsk, which could allow it to consolidate and advance the front line in the region.
“The enemy is leaving us without power, without water, without gas. Prepares us for the winter, so to say,” Mr. Dobriak said on national television.
Some 13,050 residents remain in the town and Ukrainian officials are pressing on with an evacuation plan that has been going on for some weeks. Just a month and a half ago, the town hosted more than 48,000 people, he said.
Russia continued to pummel the town on Thursday, launching a total of nine glide bombs and injuring four people in two attacks which damaged infrastructure, Mr. Dobriak said.
He said the daily attacks targeted energy facilities and other vital infrastructure. Almost half of Pokrovsk, 10 nearby villages and one smaller town were without power, he said, adding the energy infrastructure was “almost impossible to repair”.
He put the level of the destruction at about four-fifths of the town’s critical infrastructure.
Russia denies targeting civilian infrastructure.
More than 31 months since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian forces are on the defensive and Kyiv ordered the pullout of its troops from Vuhledar, another town in the east. Kyiv’s top commander this week ordered defences strengthened on the eastern front.
In a Friday morning report on the battlefield situation, Ukraine’s military said that its forces repelled 30 attacks on the Pokrovsk front over the past day as Russia pushed toward the villages of Mykolaivka and Selydove.
Employee at Russian-controlled nuclear plant killed by Ukraine in car bomb attack
An employee at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine was killed on Friday morning in a car-bomb attack that Ukrainian military intelligence said had punished a “war criminal”.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes, said the employee, Andrei Korotkiy, had died after a bomb planted under his car went off near his house in the city of Enerhodar, where the plant is located.
Mr. Korotkiy worked in the plant’s security department, the Committee said. A criminal case has been opened into his death.
Ukrainian military intelligence published a video of his car exploding and in a statement called Mr. Korotkiy a “war criminal” and collaborator, accusing him of repressing Ukrainians and of handing Russia a list of the plant’s employees and of then pointing out people with pro-Ukrainian views.
“The Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence reminds people that every war criminal will be fairly punished,” the Ukrainian agency said on its official Telegram channel.
The plant’s authorities condemned Ukrainian authorities for orchestrating the murder.
“This is a horrific, inhumane act,” said plant director Yuri Chernichuk, vowing punishment for the attackers.
“An attack on employees ensuring the safety of the nuclear facility is a reckless, outrageous step,” he added.
Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest with six reactors, soon after they entered Ukraine in February, 2022, in what Moscow called a “special military operation.” The plant is not currently operating.
Both sides have regularly accused each other of staging attacks on the plant, which both deny.
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has stationed monitors permanently at the plant. It has urged both sides to refrain from all attacks on it.