The battle for dominance in the Black Sea raged on this week between Ukraine and Russia, as elsewhere each side\u2019s forces continued the bitter fight for control in Ukraine\u2019s east with winter looming. <\/p>\n
Ukraine claimed it hit small Russian naval vessels\u00a0with sea drones, demonstrating\u00a0its determination to keep striking Russian positions at depth in occupied Crimea. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile,\u00a0a blast in Russian-occupied territory in Luhansk, eastern Ukraine,\u00a0killed a pro-Moscow official, with a Ukrainian intelligence agency taking credit\u00a0for the assassination. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what you need to know about developments this week in Ukraine. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian Defense Intelligence (GUR) claimed it hit two small Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea on Friday, its latest display of Ukraine\u2019s ability to hit Russian targets in occupied Crimea. <\/p>\n
Defence Intelligence released grainy, grayscale video showing what it claims is the moment of the strikes. <\/p>\n
Russia has not officially commented on the incident. But Russian military bloggers said unmanned boats had\u00a0targeted Russia\u2019s Black Sea fleet vessels. <\/p>\n
Ukraine has been aggressive in going after targets in occupied Crimea as a part of a broader effort to hit Russian logistics, fuel, maintenance and command centers, in order to disrupt their ability to supply the front lines. Kyiv has also focused on breaking Russia\u2019s dominance in Ukraine\u2019s territorial Black Sea waters. <\/p>\n
Moscow unleashed more missiles and attack\u00a0drones on Odesa over the past\u00a0week in an effort to hamper Ukraine\u2019s ability to maintain a shipping route out of its Black Sea ports, Ukraine\u2019s military said. <\/p>\n
On Wednesday, a Liberian-flagged cargo ship was hit just as it approached port in the Odesa region, killing the ship\u2019s\u00a0pilot and injuring four others, according to Ukraine\u2019s Operational Command South. <\/p>\n
It is thought to be the first time a civilian vessel has been hit since Ukraine established the shipping route \u2013 what it calls a humanitarian corridor \u2013 from its ports out to the Black Sea, following the collapse of a UN-brokered deal allowing safe passage. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian authorities have\u00a0said the corridor remains open despite the attacks this week. <\/p>\n
The eastern town of Avdiivka is enclosed\u00a0on three sides by Russian forces. They\u00a0have been launching waves of assaults over the past month to complete the siege but Ukrainian soldiers continue \u201cstanding their ground and inflicting major losses on the occupiers,\u201d according to Ukraine\u2019s military. <\/p>\n
The weather has been unfavorable for Russian assaults with tracked vehicles. That has made the Russians\u00a0change tactics, according to the Ukrainian military. Russia\u2019s forces have been using more drones to target heavily defended Ukrainian positions and carrying out more assaults on foot using infantry. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian defenses are well dug-in in the town. Ukraine has been fortifying defensive positions since 2014, when pro-Moscow separatists seized a large portion of the Donbas region, including the nearby city of Donetsk. Avdiivka\u00a0has been under fire since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. <\/p>\n
Those defensive positions are allowing the Ukrainian military to resist waves of relentless Russian attacks for now. A loss of territory at this point\u00a0would be a blow to morale in Ukraine, where the summer\u2019s much-vaunted counteroffensive delivered few gains. <\/p>\n
Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of the Tavria Joint Forces Operation, said\u00a0in a post on Telegram: \u201cWe are still standing. And we will continue to stand. Because Avdiivka is not just a territory on the map, but a part of Ukraine, a part of the soul of Ukrainians and the Ukrainian Donbas. <\/p>\n
\u201cLet the enemy remember that we will continue to fight. For every building, terricone or lake\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n
There has been little movement on the frontline despite Ukraine launching a counteroffensive earlier in the year. <\/p>\n
In occupied Luhansk, a car explosion killed a pro-Moscow former head of police on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s Defense Intelligence took credit for the blast, saying it was an operation conducted jointly with pro-Ukrainian partisans. <\/p>\n
Russian authorities launched an investigation into the explosion, which killed the former head of the so-called People\u2019s Militia of the Russian-backed Luhansk People\u2019s Republic (LPR) Mikhail Filiponenko. Moscow-backed separatists proclaimed a breakaway\u00a0republic in Luhansk in 2014. <\/p>\n
Defense Intelligence issued a warning to other pro-Russian officials in occupied areas, saying: \u201cAll addresses of traitors and places of their service to terrorist Russia in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine are known!\u00a0Defense Intelligence of Ukraine states that all war criminals and collaborators will receive a fair retribution!\u201d <\/p>\n
There have been several assassination attempts against Russian-backed officials in occupied Ukraine. In May, the\u00a0acting interior minister of the LPR, Igor Kornet, was \u201cseverely\u201d wounded in an explosion. <\/p>\n
In a milestone for Ukraine\u2019s long and challenging quest to join the European Union, the bloc\u2019s executive arm signaled it is politically ready for accession talks to formally begin. <\/p>\n
Nearly 18 months since the bloc gave Ukraine\u00a0conditional candidate status, the European Union\u2019s executive body said the country\u00a0is ready for detailed accession talks. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who applied for EU membership in February 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, welcomed the announcement. \u201cToday, the history of Ukraine and the whole of Europe has taken the right step,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen call it \u201ca historic day.\u201d In a speech to the\u00a0Ukrainian parliament last weekend, she said that Ukraine had \u201calready completed way over 90%\u201d of the bloc\u2019s demands. <\/p>\n
But there are caveats. The war remains a big obstacle. EU membership normally takes nearly a decade to achieve. Ukraine needs to continue to make progress on addressing corruption, limiting the influence of oligarchs and greater transparency. <\/p>\n
Ukraine has held ambitions to join the EU\u00a0for more than a decade. The aim of joining the bloc \u2013 along with NATO \u2013 has formally been part of Ukraine\u2019s constitution since 2019. <\/p>\n\n
The battle for dominance in the Black Sea raged on this week between Ukraine and Russia, as elsewhere each side\u2019s forces continued the bitter fight for control in Ukraine\u2019s east with winter looming. Ukraine claimed it hit small Russian naval vessels\u00a0with sea drones, demonstrating\u00a0its determination to keep striking Russian positions at depth in occupied Crimea. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11501","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\/11501","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=11501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}