Ukraine war.. Russia announces field gains in Mykolaiv, and Washington provides new weapons to Kiev

The battles are concentrated in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine and the Mykolaiv and Kherson front in the south, where Russia announced that it had killed hundreds of soldiers, destroyed two missile systems, and shot down two planes, while Washington announced new military aid to Kiev.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that it managed to eliminate more than 500 Ukrainian soldiers in the military operations carried out on Thursday in Mykolaiv and Kramatorsk.

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that the Russian forces destroyed with high-precision naval weapons two coastal missile systems "HARPOON" in the Odessa region, which Kyiv obtained from Britain.

He added that Russian fighters had shot down two Ukrainian warplanes in the Mykolaiv province, and that the air force and artillery had destroyed a fuel depot in the Dnipropetrovsk province.

Ukrainian soldiers on the Donetsk front (Reuters)

Ukrainian novel

In the battles of the Donetsk Province in the Donbass region, the Ukrainian army said that its forces repelled an attempt to advance by the Russian forces in Dementievka, on the axis of the city of Sloviansk, and inflicted human and equipment losses on it.

He added that areas on the axes of the cities of Kramatorsk and Bakhmut, in Donetsk, were subjected to artillery and missile shelling by the Russian forces.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the front lines of the Dnipropetrovsk Provincial Front, at his hometown in the Kryvyi Rih region, in the south of the province.

The Ukrainian presidency published photos showing the meeting of the Ukrainian president with the head of the military administration in the "Kryvyi Rih" region;

Where he pointed out the need for cities to continue working and producing, and to have access to various services, regardless of the war.

Zelensky also explored the field situation in the area that witnesses continuous shelling and battles on its front, adjacent to Kherson in the south.

Western armament

Andrei Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president's office, said that Ukrainian forces need more heavy weapons to repel Russian aggression.

Yarmac added - in a tweet on Twitter - that breaking Russia's scorched-earth policy requires more howitzers, "SPG" and Hemars, and more air and missile defenses.

In turn, the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) announced a new military aid package to Ukraine worth $400 million, which includes 4 HIMARS launchers and 155 mm high-precision artillery, which represents a development in support of Ukraine in the battle of the Donbass region, as it described it.

The new package also includes 3 tactical vehicles to recover equipment, explosives, anti-artillery radars, spare parts and maintenance.

The official explained that the new aid brings the total number of HIMARS launchers provided to Ukraine to 12, denying Russian reports that a number of them have been destroyed.

On the other hand, Russian Ambassador to Britain Andrei Keelin said that Moscow would take serious measures if Western weapons in Ukraine threatened Russian security.

Killin added that his country would take a big turn to China and the East if the West continued its sanctions against it.

Kylin stressed that Russia "will liberate the Donbass region from Ukrainian forces," considering that it is difficult for Russian forces to withdraw from southern Ukraine.

Putin criticizes sanctions

Russian President Vladimir Putin said, in a meeting with members of the Russian government, that the world will witness an inevitable food crisis in the next stage, due to the wrong policies pursued by some of Moscow's partners, especially in the field of energy and macroeconomic policy, as he put it.

He added, "This is their problem, but it will also affect us, so we must first of all take advantage of the results of the work of our agricultural producers in order to provide the local market with all the basic foodstuffs required. We must, of course, fulfill our obligations towards our permanent traditional partners."

Putin believed that continuing to impose sanctions on Russia could lead to catastrophic price increases in energy markets, and this would cause much greater damage to the countries that impose them.

The Russian president praised the resistance of other oil-producing countries to demands to increase production to compensate for the shortage caused by the boycott of Russian oil and curb the rise in prices.