Here’s what you need to know at 7am this morning:
Russia has claimed the capture of two new villages in eastern Ukraine. According to yesterday’s daily report of the Ministry of Defense, Moscow’s forces have seized the village of Novopokrovské in the Donetsk region (east) and the village of Sepova Novoselivka in the Kharkiv region (northeast).
In this context, the Ukrainian authorities announced that they had evacuated more than 700 residents of Toretsk, but nearly 5,000 people remain in the city and “many of them are trying to evacuate,” the national police said on Telegram. The city, which until recently was relatively spared by the hostilities, represents an important obstacle for access to Kramatorsk, the Kremlin’s ultimate objective in Donbass.
According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, two elderly women were killed and eight other people were injured in a Russian shelling of the city of Ukrainsk in the Donetsk region using Hurricane rockets, which damaged an administrative building and houses.
On the Russian side, Ukrainian strikes have caused power and water outages in the border region of Belgorod, and could affect others, according to local authorities. The region’s governor reported multiple attacks by Ukrainian drones that hit energy infrastructure and homes. A four-year-old girl was killed and seven people injured, according to the same source. Authorities in the neighboring regions of Kursk and Voronezh have indicated that power outages are also possible after these strikes.
