Russian forces advance on Ukraine frontline city after Crimea oil depot attack

Russian forces have entered the outskirts of the eastern Ukrainian frontline city of Toretsk, according to Ukraine’s military.

“The situation is unstable, fighting is taking place literally at every entrance [to the city],” Anastasiia Bobovnikova, a spokesperson Luhansk’s operational tactical group, told Ukraine’s national broadcaster on Monday, local time.

“The Russians have entered the eastern outskirts of the city.”

The Russian defence ministry said earlier on Monday that its forces inflicted damage to personnel and equipment near several settlements in the area — including near Toretsk.

Russia, which now controls just under a fifth of Ukrainian territory, has been advancing towards Toretsk since August. 

It has taken village by village with infantry aided by the increased use of the highly destructive guided bombs.

For Ukraine, Toretsk has been a frontline city for 10 years now, as it is close to Ukraine’s territories seized by Russian-backed separatists in 2014.

It has since become an anchor of Kyiv’s fortifications.

For Moscow, seizing the town would bring closer Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal of taking the Ukraine’s east region known as Donbas.

After failing to capture the capital Kyiv when launching Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Mr Putin focused on taking the old industrial heartland.

Donbas, which covers the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, has since become the war’s main theatre where some of biggest battles in Europe for generations have taken place.

With Ukraine now losing more and more territory, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered his top brass do “everything that can be done” to minimise Moscow’s advance along the frontline.

Russia advances on Donetsk as strikes seen in Kherson, Khmelnytskyi

The Russian defence ministry in a briefing said it also captured the village of Grodivka, a settlement in the Donetsk region near Pokrovsk, as troops close in on the key logistics hub.

Further north in the Donetsk region, Ukraine said a Russian attack had killed one person and wounded seven — including children aged two and 13 — in the city of Sloviansk.  

Kyiv earlier said that Russian attacks had killed three civilians overnight — two brothers aged 35 and 38 in the eastern region of Sumy and a 61-year-old woman in the southern Kherson region.

And in the city of Kherson, the governor said a Russian strike had wounded 19 people and damaged an educational facility and various residential buildings.

Russian forces also launched several missiles and dozens of drones overnight at Ukraine, the air force in Kyiv said, with two missiles shot down over the capital and the third exploding near an airfield in the central Khmelnytskyi region.

Authorities in Kyiv said debris from the downed missiles had landed near a kindergarten.

Ukraine strikes oil depot in occupied Crimea, military says

Kyiv also said on Monday that its forces had struck a large oil terminal overnight on the occupied Crimean Peninsula.

“At night, a successful strike was carried out on the enemy’s offshore oil terminal in temporarily occupied Feodosia, Crimea,” the Ukrainian military said in a post on social media.

“The Feodosia terminal is the largest in Crimea in terms of transhipment of oil products, which were used, among other things, to meet the needs of the Russian occupation army.”

Russian-installed authorities in Crimea said a fire had broken out at an oil facility in the Black Sea port town of some 70,000 people and that there were no casualties.

The defence ministry said that 12 Ukrainian attack drones had been downed over the peninsula overnight, out of a total of 21 deployed by Kyiv against Russian targets.

Kyiv has ramped up strikes targeting Russia’s energy sector in recent months, aiming to dent revenues used by Moscow to fund its invasion — now grinding through its third year.

Russia strikes two civilian ships in Odesa, Ukraine says

A Russian missile hit a Palau-flagged vessel in Ukraine’s southern port of Odesa on Monday, killing a Ukrainian national and injuring five crew members in the second such attack in as many days, officials said.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X that the two ships were damaged in the Black Sea grain-export hub without giving details on the ships’ conditions.

“We must join forces of all responsible states and organisations to … ensure freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and global food security,” he wrote.

Moscow has repeatedly denied it attacks civilian targets.

Odesa regional governor Oleh Kiper, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the man killed in the latest attack was a port worker.

“A 60-year-old Ukrainian, an employee of a private cargo handling company, was killed. Five other foreign nationals were injured,” he said.

Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba identified the vessel as the Optima and said it arrived in Odesa hours before the attack.

Russia “is attempting in this way to destroy shipping in the Black Sea guaranteeing food security” Mr Kuleba said.

“The consequences can only mean greater instability in sensitive regions dependent on food imports and tension in international relations.”

Ukraine’s restoration ministry identified the ship attacked on Sunday in the nearby port of Pivdennyi as the Saint Kitts and Nevis-flagged Paresa which had a cargo of 6,000 tonnes of corn.

In a Facebook post, the ministry said the Paresa’s 15-member crew of Syrian and Egyptian nationals was not injured.

The ministry said the Paresa was the 20th civilian vessel to be damaged by Russian attacks.

Last month, the Saint Kitts and Nevis-flagged bulk carrier Aya was hit by a Russian missile in the Black Sea.

Another vessel, an Antigua-flagged carrier, was damaged in a Russian missile strike in Odesa.

Russia has struck the port repeatedly in the war since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Reuters/AFP