Ukraine, Russia trade long-range strikes, ground combat sees relative pause

Russia and Ukraine traded long-range weapons strikes as ground fighting appeared to take a relative pause, according to news and official reports on Tuesday, July 5.

The Russian Federation (RF) fired seven guided missiles at an unspecified target in the central Ukrainian Dnipro Region. Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF) shot down six of the weapons and the seventh struck a private home in the Sinelnikovsky District of the city of Dnipro, said Valentyn Reznichenko, head of Dnipro Region, in a July 5 statement. Property was damaged but no-one was hurt, he said.

Relatively distant from the fighting lines, Dnipro is, however, within range of RF cruise and ballistic missiles. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, missile defenses in major cities like Dnipro have slowly strengthened, but in most cases UAF anti-aircraft systems fail to knock down more than half of incoming RF weapons. Reznichenko said destruction of six of seven missiles, along with absence of casualties, was a major success.

In the normally relatively quiet Sumy sector, in northern Ukraine, a pair of long range, unguided rockets struck the village of Shostka at 4 A.M. Buildings were damaged and emergency response teams were investigating reports of possible victims, said Mykola Noha, Shostka city mayor, in a statement.

Roman Starovoit, governor of Russia’s Kursk Oblast, on the morning of Tuesday, July 5, reported cross-border firing striking the villages of Markovoand and Temkino. Images purportedly from the scene showed mortar craters in a farmyard. There were no reports of injuries.

Both Ukrainian and pro-Russian news platforms confirmed UAF long-range weapons hit and set afire a munitions depot in the town of Stakhanov. Social media images from the scene showed a massive fire and secondary explosions.

In recent days the UAF has stepped up long-range strikes against RF targets, frequently targeting RF ammunition warehouses. US-made artillery rockets fired from recently-imported HIMARS or M270 systems struck a depot in the city Donetsk on Monday.

According to Ukrainian news reports, both the Stakhanov and Donetsk storage sites had long been out of range of UAF artillery, a situation that changed after the high-accuracy American rockets arrived in Ukraine. First deliveries of HIMARS and M270 took place in early July, UAF statements have said.

Ground fighting reportedly took place in the narrow Bakhmut and Slovyansk sectors, as RF infantry units backed by artillery attempted to push respectively east and south, in an attempt to cut of UAF forces in the vicinity. According to RF news platforms the attacks made some progress, while according to Ukraine’s Army General Staff, the attacks were repelled.