Moscow [Russia], October 16: Russian President Vladimir Putin once again declared Kiev's counteroffensive a "complete failure" and spoke of an improvement in Russia's positions in Ukraine, in remarks broadcast on Moscow state television on Sunday.
Throughout the area of the "special military operation," as Putin officially calls the war, Russian forces were improving their position, he said.
Russian forces were in a phase of "active defence," and fighting in the war zone was continuing, Putin said.
The Defence Ministry in Moscow reported the shooting down of 27 Ukrainian drones, most of them in the Russian border region of Kursk.
On Sunday, two people died from Russian shelling of a village in the Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian sources.
The general staff in Kiev reported dozens of battles in the war zone. The southern city of Kherson was repeatedly attacked by Russian warplanes and artillery, the head of the regional military administration, Roman Morchko, reported.
"The enemy shelling has damaged electricity lines and destroyed houses," he wrote on Telegram.
According to Mrochko, Russian airstrikes hit infrastructure in the morning. As a result, the supply of electricity and water had temporarily failed, he said.
Russian forces occupied Kherson at the beginning of their invasion of Ukraine but then had to evacuate the city again in the course of a counteroffensive by Ukrainian troops last autumn and withdraw via the Dnipro River.
From London, the British Ministry of Defence said that Russia was building a new rail link in the south of Ukraine. Moscow was relying heavily on its rail network to supply its troops, it said.
"Russia almost certainly continues to maintain and improve its rail lines of communication in Ukraine and is constructing a new railway line to Mariupol which will reduce travel times for supplies to the Zaporizhzhia front," the MoD said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
"Russia is using civilian contractors and equipment to complete this project, likely calculating this will complicate targeting efforts and preserve military railway troop capabilities for urgent tasks elsewhere," it continued.
"The rail network in occupied Ukraine remains largely viable but vulnerable to sporadic interdiction by Ukrainian artillery, air launched missiles and sabotage," it said, but added that the new line fell within the range of Ukrainian long-range precision strike systems. It noted however that "in previous conflicts, attrition of rail transportation has required focused, sustained, and repeated attack by air and/or ground forces."
The MoD has been publishing updates since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, while Moscow dismisses these as disinformation.
Source: Qatar Tribune
