Russian Federation (RF) forces have halted attempts at advance in all sectors, but their crushing air and artillery bombardment of Ukrainian cities is continuing unchecked, a senior Ukraine Armed Forces official said on Monday.
Vice Defense Minister Anna Malyar in a statement released to media linked the halt to “intense casualties” suffered by RF ground and air forces.
She said the RF could still renew the offensive and, were it to do so, it would attempt to adapt to Ukraine’s so far generally effective defense tactics.
RF forces currently are digging in and working hard to delivery replacements, ammunition, fuel and food to units facing Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF) troops.
She said the RF’s logistics difficulties are greatest in the southern sector, where RF supply lines stretch at times more than 200 kilometers back to bases in Crimea.
Malyar called on civilians and Territorial Defense fighters in southern road junctions overrun by RF forces, like Tokmak, Melitopol’ and Kherson, to attack RF supply columns.
RF forces although halted are using artillery and air strikes where they can to destroy military infrastructure, and at times simply to blast civilian homes and businesses, in an attempt to break Ukrainian civilian will to resist.
Malyar’s comments came as Ukraine media reported fresh RF artillery attacks against apartments and homes in Mykolaiv, Mariupol, Akhtyrka, Nizhin, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv, where the university was damaged.
An artillery shell from a Monday morning RF attack aimed apparently at Kyiv’s suburban Antonov aircraft factory struck an apartment building in the capital’s Obolon district, killing two and injuring seven, the UNIAN news agency reported.
