Russia launches retaliatory strikes and builds up huge forces in eastern Ukraine

 Russia launched retaliatory strikes on the port of Odesa and other sites in southern Ukraine in response to the targeting of the bridge linking it to Crimea, while the Ukrainian army announced that Moscow had mobilized huge forces seeking to penetrate its defenses on the eastern front.

Russian Ministry of Defense said that its forces launched, early today, Tuesday, precision strikes with high-precision weapons on facilities in the Odesa region in southern Ukraine.

The ministry added, in a statement, that what it described as retaliatory missile attacks targeted Ukrainian facilities for the manufacture of drone boats in the Odesa region, noting that these drones were to be used in what it called terrorist attacks against Russia.

And the Russian Ministry of Defense added that the missile strikes destroyed fuel stores with a capacity of about 70,000 tons in Mykolaiv and Odesa provinces.

Russian media said that the Russian forces launched a missile attack, which they described as major, on the cities of Odesa, Mykolaiv (south), and Kharkiv (northeast), and published pictures that they said were of the missile attack on these three cities.

For his part, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the missile strikes on southern Ukraine were retaliatory, noting that Moscow knew from the beginning that the attack on the Crimean bridge by two drone boats was behind Ukraine.

On the other hand, the Ukrainian army announced that its defenses had shot down 6 "Caliber" missiles launched from the Black Sea towards Odesa, but explained that its wreckage damaged facilities in the port area and private homes.

The Ukrainian army also said that it had shot down 21 Russian-made Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones in the Odesa region and four more in the northern Mykolaiv region.

The governor of Mykolaiv confirmed that industrial structures in the city had been hit by a Russian bombing, which caused a fire, but no injuries were reported.

The spokeswoman for the Southern Military Command in the Ukrainian army, Natalia Hominyuk, said that the Russian attacks with marches and missiles failed to disrupt the operation of the port of Odesa.

Odessa and its environs include the 3 most important ports from which grain export operations were launched under the agreement, which expired yesterday, and Russia refused to extend it.

Earlier today, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had thwarted a new Ukrainian attack attempt, which it described as a terrorist, by using 17 drones on targets in Crimea.

It is noteworthy that the Crimean Bridge, which extends 18 kilometers, was subjected to an attack yesterday, the second in 9 months after a section of it was detonated with a truck bomb last October.

Ukraine did not officially claim responsibility for the new attack, but media reports attributed to Ukrainian sources that the attack was planned by the Ukrainian security services.

On the ground, the spokesman for the Eastern Operations Command of the Ukrainian forces, Serhiy Chervaty, said today, Tuesday, that Russia has mobilized more than 100,000 soldiers and 900 tanks in the Liman, Donetsk, and Kobyansk-Baharkiv axis.

The British newspaper The Telegraph said that the massive mobilization of forces in this region is a Russian tactic aimed at dispersing the Ukrainian counterattack that began on the fourth of last June and is facing difficulties due to the strong fortifications that the Russians have built during the past months in the regions of Donetsk (east) and Zaporizhia (southeast).

In Moscow, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced today that its forces advanced about two kilometers during attacks launched near Kobyansk in Kharkiv, an important railway junction, on the border with Donetsk Province in eastern Ukraine.

Russian media said that the Russian forces took control of the town of "Novo-Silovskoye" in the Kobyansk-Kharkiv axis, penetrating the defenses of the Ukrainian army in the region.

In a separate development, the Russian State Security Service announced that it had thwarted the implementation of an act it described as a terrorist attack targeting a hydroelectric power station in the Yaroslavl region, northeast of Moscow.

The State Security Service said that it had arrested a Russian woman in the city of Uglich in the province, and added that she was collecting information under the direction of Ukrainian security services to bomb the vital station in the region.

Source: Agencies