Ukrainian officials on Monday claimed to have killed or wounded as many as 200 Russian soldiers in the occupied city of Melitopol as well as a large number of Russian mercenaries in the town of Kadiivka, in missile strikes in the east of the country, over the weekend.
Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, told Ukrainian television that Ukrainian forces attacked a hotel in Kadiivka overnight where members of Russia’s brutal private Wagner mercenaries were based.
Photos posted on Telegram channels appear to show a building largely reduced to rubble. Sources in Kyiv say the strike in Kadiivka resulted in “significant losses”, the UK’s Telegraph reported.
It comes as Ukrainian officials also claimed that as many as 200 Russian troops were killed or wounded in a missile strike in Melitopol on Saturday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that the situation “remains very difficult” in several frontline cities in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.
Gaidai however did not give casualty figures for the incident in Kadiivka, but he said the survivors did not have adequate medical services available.
“I am sure that at least 50 percent of those who managed to survive will die before they get medical care,” he said.
Ukrainian media reported that the Kadiivka hotel had been closed for some time but that the Wagner group, a private military contractor with close ties to the Kremlin, was using it as makeshift barracks.
The Telegraph reported its forces are known to be fighting in parts of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor of Melitopol, has claimed that around 200 Russian soldiers were killed in a missile strike on a hotel complex in the southern Ukrainian city on Saturday.
The visuals of the Ukrainian artillery attack against the hotel showed burning buildings as well as dead and wounded Russian soldiers among the wreckage, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Both the Russian and Ukrainian sides said that there were dozens of casualties but the figures differed.
Russian officials have confirmed the strike and claimed it was carried out by US-supplied Himars missiles.
Odessa power outage
Meanwhile, further west in Odessa, more than 1.5 million people were without power Sunday after Russian drone attacks hit two energy facilities, according to Zelensky.
He said in his nightly address: “At this time, it has become possible to partially restore supplies in Odessa and other cities and districts in the region.
‘We are doing everything to reach the maximum number possible in the conditions that developed after the Russian strikes.’
Russian forces used Iranian-made drones to hit two energy plants in Odessa on Saturday.
Since October, Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with large waves of missile and drone strikes.
Ukraine’s strike capability
The HIMARS systems supplied by the US and similar M270s from Britain have significantly bolstered the Ukrainian military’s precision-strike capability.
The HIMARS and M270 have a longer range, a much better precision and a faster rate of fire compared with rocket launchers used by both Russia and Ukraine.
The truck-mounted HIMARS launchers fire GPS-guided missiles capable of hitting targets up to 80 kilometers away, a distance that puts them out of reach of most Russian artillery systems, Wall Street Journal reported. The mobile launchers are hard for the enemy to spot and can quickly change position after firing to escape airstrikes.
The Ukrainian military so far has received a dozen HIMARS and several M270 systems.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is due to host an online meeting of G7 leaders on Monday, where further sanctions on Russia and Iran will be discussed.
BBC reported that the proposed measures would target Iran over its supply of drones to Russia, while the ninth package of Russia sanctions would place almost 200 more individuals on an EU sanctions list.
