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Ukraine, Russia Exchange Missile, Drone Assaults

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Firefighters extinguish a blaze at an electricity facility after a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on March 22, 2024.
Firefighters extinguish a blaze at an electricity facility after a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on March 22, 2024.

Russia shot down 10 Ukrainian missiles over Sevastopol in Crimea and captured a village near Bakhmut on Saturday, Russian officials said.

As Ukraine has suffered shortages of ammunition, Russia has captured several villages on the front line in eastern Ukraine. On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had taken the village of Ivanivske. The town of Chasiv Yar is nearby, and beyond that lies the city of Kramatorsk.

While the ground war may be moving slowly, the two militaries have kept up their aerial assaults.

Ukrainian forces shot down 31 of 34 attack drones launched overnight by Russia, the Ukrainian air force said Saturday, as the country continues to recover from Russia’s massive assault on Ukrainian energy infrastructure Friday.

The drones were downed over parts of central, southern and southeastern Ukraine, the country’s military said.

Power grid recovers slowly

Energy workers are still working to restore electricity to some Ukrainians, though, a day after Moscow launched what Kyiv said was the largest attack of the war on the country’s power grid, authorities said Saturday.

The “technical possibility for electricity supply” had been restored in most affected regions, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram. But the situation remained difficult in the region of Kharkiv, which was hit particularly hard.

People in Kharkiv city, as well as the western Khmelnytskyi region, were still without power, national grid operator Ukrenergo said in a statement.

The Russian assault killed at least five people and left more than 1 million people without power. It also struck Ukraine’s largest dam.

On Saturday morning, meanwhile, two people were killed and seven were injured in Ukrainian air attacks on Russia’s Belgorod region, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

“It’s shaping up to be a difficult morning,” Gladkov said in a post on Telegram.

An overnight drone attack by Ukraine on Russia’s Samara region caused a fire at a major oil refinery.

In turn, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday its forces had taken control of the village of Krasnoye in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.

Some information in this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.

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