Ukrainian forces have reportedly damaged a key bridge outside the southern occupied city of Melitopol, a key objective in the region.
The crossing over the Molochna River is situated between Melitopol and the village of Kostyantynivka just to the east of the city on the M14 highway and was struck overnight.
Video posted online showed two supports of the bridge had been damaged during the attack, with the span partly collapsed by the blast, making it reportedly unusable for heavy military traffic.
An explosion damaged the bridge in occupied Melitopol (Zaporizhzhia Oblast) last night.
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) December 13, 2022
Ukrainian Army continues targeting Russian ground lines of communication on the southern front. Melitopol is a key logistics hub that leads to occupied Crimea.
📹https://t.co/ilVF86MTrq pic.twitter.com/rE8x0fyrly
The strike on the bridge comes just two days after Ukraine hit a Russian barracks sited in a resort in the city, with Himars rockets causing substantial damage and casualties.
The increase in Ukrainian pressure on Russian forces in Melitopol appears to be following a similar pattern to tactics used against Kherson before its liberation, with the targeting of both Russian troops and supply lines, including logistics links to the Crimean peninsula and to the east via the Russia-occupied cities to Berdiansk and Mariupol.
With Ukrainian forces now operating east of the Dnipro River, Melitopol is seen as a key objective for Kyiv in the south of the country after the recapture of Kherson.
In the country’s east, where there has been recent heavy fighting around the city of Bakhmut, both Russia and Ukraine said on Tuesday that the situation on the battlefield in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk was difficult, with each claiming some successes in repelling the other’s attacks.
The so-called Donetsk People’s Republic is one of four regions in Ukraine that Moscow proclaimed as its own in September in an exercise Ukraine and its allies denounced as a “sham”, coercive referendum.
Advancing in some areas of the region was difficult, the top Moscow-installed official in the occupied parts of the territory in eastern Ukraine said, but they added that more than half of Donetsk was under Russian control.
“A little more than 50% of the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic has been liberated,” Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed administrator of the portion controlled by Moscow, told the Russian state-owned news agency RIA.
Ukraine’s military command said in its daily battlefield update on Tuesday that its forces had repelled Russians in 10 areas of the region.
Russia has claimed to be gradually advancing its positions, with the defence ministry saying on Monday that its offensive there had killed 30 Ukrainian military personnel the day before.
However, independent assessments of Russian gains show little progress in weeks of heavy fighting as Ukraine has moved to shore up its positions ahead of the arrival of full winter conditions on the front.
The latest fighting came as dozens of countries and international organisations threw their weight behind a fresh and urgent push on Tuesday to keep Ukraine powered, fed, warm and moving in the face of sustained Russian aerial bombardments that have plunged millions into the cold and dark in winter.
An international donor conference in Paris raised €1.05bn (£900m) of aid – both financial and in kind – to be rushed to Ukraine in the coming weeks and months to help its beleaguered civilian population survive winter’s freezing temperatures and long nights.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, in a speech opening the conference, described Moscow’s bombardments of civilian targets as a war crime. He said the Kremlin was attacking civilian infrastructure because its troops had suffered setbacks on the battlefields.
Moscow’s intention is to “plunge the Ukrainian people into despair”, Macron said.
As temperatures plunge and snow falls, Ukraine’s needs are huge and pressing. Successive waves of missile and drone attacks since October have destroyed about half of the country’s energy infrastructure, the government in Kyiv says, and believes Moscow’s intention is to create a fresh wave of refugees flocking to Europe. Russia says striking civilian infrastructure is intended to weaken Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. In Ukraine, life for many is becoming a battle for survival.
To Ukraine’s north, the Belarusian ministry of defence on Tuesday announced a “sudden combat readiness check” of its troops – one in a string of announcements by Belarus, a Russian ally, since mid-October which Kyiv say is designed to stoke fear in Ukrainians and disinform Ukraine’s army.
Belarus has not sent forces into Ukraine but it allows Russia to regularly launch missiles from its territory into Ukraine and was one of the key launchpads for Russia’s February attack.
The exercises are mostly taking place in the north-west of the country, close to Poland. Ukraine’s army said its chief, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, had spoken to his Polish counterpart, Tomas Piotrowski, to discuss the announcement.
Analysts say that a potential attack on Ukraine from the north would probably be aimed at cutting off or disrupting supplies coming in from Poland as well as stretching Ukrainian forces across the country.
