Ukrainian forces claim attack on Russian munitions dump as counter-offensive continues

Ukrainian forces blew up an ammunition depot in Russian-held territory in southern Ukraine, Ukrainian military officials and local authorities said on Sunday.

Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odessa military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app that the attack took place near the village of Rykove, Kherson region. He posted video footage taken from a distance that appeared to show a large fire and smoke over the fields.

“Our forces dealt a heavy blow in the morning, and a very hard one, in the village of Rykove,” Mr Bratchuk wrote. There was no independent confirmation of the strike, the video has not been verified by The New York Times, and there has been no direct comment from Russian authorities.

The location is important because it is close to a bridge connecting Crimea – illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 – to a Russian-occupied country north of the Sea of ​​Azov. Military analysts say one of the likely goals of the counteroffensive President Volodymyr Zelensky announced this month is to cut through that land bridge. For months, Ukrainian officials have said they have launched attacks on Russian military logistics centers, including railway depots, airfields and munitions depots.

Rykove is located about 70 miles southeast of the western bank of the Dnipro River, an area controlled by Ukrainian forces. It was not clear how the attack took place, but that would put the village within range of an attack by a long-range Storm Shadow missile, which Britain said it had donated to Ukraine in recent weeks. About a year ago, Ukraine also began using HIMARS, a United States missile system that is also capable of hitting targets dozens of miles behind the front lines.

The counter-offensive has intensified fighting at several points along the frontline in the south, but has shown little sign of a breakthrough.

Military experts say months of artillery duels and trench warfare are likely ahead. Independent analysts say it will be difficult for Ukrainian troops to break through the heavily fortified Russian lines defended by tank traps, minefields and artillery in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, as well as the eastern region of Donetsk.

• dam disaster: As Ukraine continues its counteroffensive, it continues to deal with the aftermath of a June 6 explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka dam in the lower Dnipro River, flooding parts of the Kherson region and elsewhere, and causing environmental devastation.

A total of 16 people have died in the floods and 31 others are missing, Ukraine’s interior ministry said on Telegram on Sunday, raising the death toll by two. The ministry said 1,300 homes were flooded. Moscow has blamed Ukraine for the explosion, but there are indications that the dam, which was controlled by Russian troops, was destroyed from the inside. According to a pro-Russian official, Andrei Alekseyenko, 29 people died in the part of the Kherson region on the eastern bank of the river controlled by Russian forces.

• NATO membership: President Biden is under pressure from Ukraine’s allies to expedite Ukraine’s NATO membership and offer a surer path to joining the alliance, but he has not yet changed his stance. On Saturday, Mr Biden appeared to reinforce that position by suggesting there would be no fast track for Ukraine, which applied to join the alliance last September.

  “They have to meet the same standards. So we’re not going to make it easy,” the president told reporters. Membership in the alliance, which would place Ukraine under the security umbrella of NATO, is seen by Mr Zelensky as a core strategic objective. It is likely to be discussed next month at a NATO summit in Lithuania.