Russia said Friday that it had launched massive strikes against Ukrainian targets over the past week, while Ukraine claimed to have repelled multiple Russian attacks over the past 24 hours.
The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that from June 22-28, the Russian army delivered 17 group strikes with precision-guided weapons and combat unmanned aerial vehicles, hitting energy facilities of Ukrainian military-industrial enterprises, military airfield infrastructure, logistics centers accumulating Western-supplied armaments, and assembly and storage sites for attack unmanned drones and vessels.
The strikes also targeted temporary deployment areas of Ukrainian troops and foreign mercenaries, the ministry said.
On the same day, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a war report that Ukrainian troops engaged in 131 battles on the front lines in the past 24 hours.
The report said that in the Kharkiv and Kupyansk regions, the Ukrainian army repelled several Russian attacks, and fighting is still ongoing while in the Pokrovsk direction, the Russian offensives showed no signs of slowdown.
During Friday, the Russian forces launched 36 attacks on the Ukrainian defense line, of which 27 had been repelled, and nine were still raging.
Also on Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that it had noted increased activities in the Black Sea of U.S. drones carrying out reconnaissance and gathering targeting information for high-precision Western weapons used by Ukraine to strike Russian facilities.
This demonstrates the increasing involvement of the United States and NATO countries in the conflict in Ukraine, which increases the risk of a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.
Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov has ordered the Russian army's General Staff to come up with proposals on how to promptly deal with provocations by the U.S. strategic drones operating over the Black Sea.
Meanwhile, a Pentagon report released on Wednesday found 62.2 million U.S. dollar worth of military supplies provided by the United States to Ukraine were reported as missing as of late November last year. According to the report, the U.S. Office of Defense Cooperation in Ukraine, which is responsible for providing equipment and training to Ukraine, could not tell which of these items were lost, destroyed, or resold elsewhere.
Since the Ukraine crisis escalated in February 2022, NATO countries led by the United States have sent a large amount of weapons and equipment to Ukraine. Russia previously said that some of these weapons had been resold on the black market, warning once they fall into the hands of terrorists, it will worsen the already unstable regional situation.
Russia conducts group strikes against Ukrainian targets, Ukraine repels Russian offensives
