This week, Ukrainian forces continued to hold out against a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine as the White House claimed Russia is executing its own troops for disobeying orders. <\/p>\n
In southern Ukraine, authorities issued evacuation orders for civilians where Russia has stepped up aerial attacks. <\/p>\n
Strikes in a western Ukrainian city blew out windows at a nuclear power plant, once again raising safety concerns. <\/p>\n
Here are the key developments\u2026 <\/p>\n
The US says Russia is executing its own soldiers and has threatened entire units with execution for failing to obey orders. <\/p>\n
National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John\u00a0Kirby\u00a0told reporters: \u201cWe have information that the Russian military has been actually executing soldiers who refuse to follow orders, we also have information that Russian commanders are threatening to execute entire units if they seek to retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kirby did not provide further details on the claim that Russia was executing its own. Russia has previously been accused of using \u201cbarrier troops\u201d to keep soldiers from deserting the front lines. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s reprehensible to think about \u2013 that you would execute your own soldiers, because they didn\u2019t want to follow orders, and now threatening to execute entire units is barbaric,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s mobilized forces in the region \u201cremain under-trained, under-equipped and unprepared for combat,\u201d Kirby said, and have been largely used in what he called \u201chuman wave tactics\u201d as it attempts to forge ahead with a renewed offensive. <\/p>\n
While Russia continues to have some offensive capability and may achieve some tactical gains on the battlefield, it continues to show no regard for the lives of soldiers,\u201d Kirby told reporters. <\/p>\n
Russia continues its brutal offensive in eastern Ukraine. <\/p>\n
In the city of Avdiivka, Ukraine claimed it had been successful in repelling assaults and taking out large numbers of Russian soldiers. <\/p>\n
Rain over the last few days has slowed down Russian forces as they continue efforts to encircle the city and take over high ground. \u201cMoving on foot on wet ground is difficult, let alone moving heavy equipment,\u201d a local military official said. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur warriors stopped them and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, who lost at least a brigade of personnel,\u201d Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. <\/p>\n
Avdiivka has been a front line city since 2014,\u00a0when Moscow-backed separatists seized a large portion of the Donbas region. It has been under fire since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Most residents have fled the fighting. Some of the remaining civilians are trickling out of the city with the help of the police. <\/p>\n
In Kupiansk, Ukrainian soldiers are fighting off Russian efforts to capture a strategic railway interchange. <\/p>\n
Assaults are around the clock, according to Ukrainian military on the ground. <\/p>\n
Kupiansk was occupied by Russian forces for nearly seven months early on in the war. Since its liberation in September 2022, the Ukrainian military has been trying to resist Russian assaults. The city is strategically important to prevent Russia from accessing the nearby Oskil River. <\/p>\n
Zelensky said: \u201cKupiansk and Avdiivka are in heavy, tough battles, but our soldiers are holding their ground.\u201d <\/p>\n
As Russian forces continue to pummel residential areas in the Kherson region with guided aerial bombs, officials have started mandatory evacuations of children. <\/p>\n
Ninety children have been evacuated across 23 villages along the Ukrainian-controlled western bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson region. <\/p>\n
Nearly 700 children still remain in areas that continue to come under heavy bombardment. <\/p>\n
Since Wednesday, Russians have launched nearly 35 guided aerial bombs daily at settlements along the Dnipro River, killing at least eight civilians, including a 13-year-old boy in the town of Beryslav, according to Ukrainian officials. <\/p>\n
Kherson region military administration Oleksandr Prokudin visited the most frequently shelled settlements to convince parents to take their children to safety. \u201cChildren need to be safe. To play in peace. Russian shelling deprives our children of all this,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
At least 500 Ukrainian children have been killed and more than 1,000 have been injured since the start of Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine in February 2022, according to an official Ukrainian government database. <\/p>\n
Ukraine has previously ordered mandatory evacuations <\/strong>of civilians, particularly children in areas close to front lines in the east and south. <\/p>\n Shockwaves from explosions near the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant in western Ukraine shattered many windows at the facility and temporarily cut off power to some off-site radiation monitoring stations. <\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that numerous windows at the site were destroyed shows just how close it was. <\/p>\n Next time, we may not be so fortunate,\u201d IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement on Wednesday. \u201cHitting a nuclear power plant must be avoided at all costs.\u201d <\/p>\n Two drones were shot down at a distance of approximately 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) and 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from the site, Zelensky said, accusing Russia of targeting the nuclear facility. \u201cIt is highly likely that the target for these drones was the Khmelnytsky Nuclear Power Plant,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cThis incident again underlines the extremely precarious nuclear safety situation in Ukraine, which will continue as long as this tragic war goes on,\u201d Grossi said. <\/p>\n Fears of a nuclear incident have been raised since the start of Russia\u2019s full scale invasion. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, close to the front line and occupied by Russian troops since March 2022, has been the main focus of concern. Located on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, the plant was put into cold shutdown in June to limit the chances of a large-scale nuclear disaster after the breach of the Nova Kakhova dam lowered water levels used for cooling. <\/p>\n\n This week, Ukrainian forces continued to hold out against a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine as the White House claimed Russia is executing its own troops for disobeying orders. In southern Ukraine, authorities issued evacuation orders for civilians where Russia has stepped up aerial attacks. Strikes in a western Ukrainian city blew out windows at <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} \u2018Next time, we may not be so fortunate\u2019<\/h2>\n