Ukraine said a progress in its counterattack, which it began last Junes to regain areas lost to Russian forces.
Ukrainian officials accused Moscow of bombing ports and silos for storing grain in the south of the country.
A Ukrainian military spokesman said that his country’s forces achieved success in villages near Bakhmut, a major town that Russian forces took control of last May after months of fighting, and which Kiev is seeking to regain.
A second spokesman also stated that Ukrainian forces are taking fortified positions and preparing to march towards Verbov village as part of their advance towards the Sea of Azov to the south.
At the same time, Oleh Kiper, the governor of the Odessa region – which includes the ports of Izmail and Rene on the Danube River, said that the region had been subjected to Russian bombing, which caused damage to the infrastructure.
Kiper added that the attack damaged a checkpoint building, grain storage facilities, and more than 30 trucks and cars, in addition to wounding two people.
The Ukrainian army confirmed that the attack lasted two hours, during which it shot down 26 of the 38 Iranian drones used by Russia during the war.
The attack is the latest on Ukrainian grain silos and port facilities since last July, when Russia withdrew from a grain agreement that allowed Ukrainian grain to be exported via the Black Sea.
Since then, Ukraine, a major global grain producer and exporter, has been boosting its exports via the Danube River.
In addition to the attack on the Odessa region, the Ukrainian army said that the regions of Mykolaiv, Kherson and Kirovohrad were subjected to attacks which resulted injuries, but no reports of deaths.
Meanwhile, Russian authorities suspended traffic on the strategic Crimean Bridge on Wednesday, and also revealed the number of people it recruited during the past months in light of the ongoing war with Ukraine since February 2022.
Russian authorities said that they suspended vehicle traffic on the Crimean Bridge before announcing its resumption later, a measure they often take due to drone or missile attacks launched by Ukraine.
The Crimean Peninsula – which Moscow annexed in 2014 – was exposed, especially its strategic bridge linking it to Russia.
It has been subjected to repeated attacks over the past months, causing the disruption of car and train traffic several times.
In a related context, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev – currently Vice Chairman of the National Security Council – announced that he visited a military training site near the front line in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a video posted on social media, Medvedev said that his country’s army has recruited more than 325,000 people since the beginning of the year.
That is, 45 thousand more than the previous toll announced by Moscow at the beginning of this September.
Russia intensified its campaigns to recruit volunteers to fight, while providing them with facilities and privileges that included obtaining its citizenship.
This was interpreted by Kiev and its Western allies as an attempt to compensate for the human losses incurred by Russian forces on the fronts, which Moscow denies.
