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Agenda For Contact Group Meeting Agreed As Ukrainian Forces Claim Successful Use Of HIMARS

By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service July 18, 2022

Six people have been killed after Russia's military shelled a building in the eastern Ukrainian town of Toretsk, Ukrainian emergency service officials said on July 18.

"Early in the morning, the town of Toretsk was shelled. A two-story building with people inside was destroyed," the Ukrainian State Service for Emergency Situations said in a statement on social media.

"Rescuers found and recovered the bodies of five dead people in total. Three people were rescued from the rubble and one of them died in hospital," the statement said.

The service posted photographs on social media of rescue workers digging through rubble and what was left of the devastated building, and said the search for survivors had ended.

Toretsk, a town with an estimated population of 30,000 people, is located some 50 kilometers south of Kramatorsk, one of the last Ukrainian-controlled towns in the industrial east.

The head of Russia's National Defense Management Center, Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, said last week that ammunition depots and armored vehicles had been placed at a school in Toretsk, according to TASS. The claim could not be independently verified.

On July 17, a Ukrainian military official said Russia was preparing for the next stage of its offensive in Ukraine following orders from Moscow to step up military operations. He said Moscow's main goal was to fully capture the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in the east -- which make up the Donbas -- but with attacks occurring in central, northeastern, and southern Ukraine as well.

"It is not only missile strikes from the air and sea," said Vadym Skibitskiy, a spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence. "We can see shelling along the entire line of contact, along the entire front line. There is an active use of tactical aviation and attack helicopters.

"There is indeed a certain activation of the enemy along the entire front line...Clearly preparations are now under way for the next stage of the offensive."

Kyiv has said in recent days that its forces are themselves preparing for a massive counteroffensive to reclaim land previously lost, especially in the south.

Ukrainian and U.S. defense officials on July 18 discussed the situation on the ground ahead of a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group scheduled to take place later this week.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Twitter that he had a telephone call with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to discuss the framework of the upcoming meeting.

"We agreed on the agenda, shared information on the control of arms arriving to Ukraine etc. Also, @SecDef (Austin) has some very good news, but details will come a little later," Reznikov said.

The next meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group will take place on July 20. At the group's last meeting in May, a total of 47 countries took part and 20 of them announced security assistance packages for Ukraine.

Russia-backed separatists claimed later on July 18 that Siversk, a town about 8 kilometers west of the front line, was under their control.

Valeriy Zaluzhniy, commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, said earlier that Ukrainian forces managed to stabilize the situation along the front line.

Zaluzhniy said on Facebook that in a conversation with U.S. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he explained that the timely arrival of U.S.-supplied high-mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) had been a factor in Ukrainian forces maintaining their defensive lines.

"We managed to stabilize the situation. It is complex, intense, but completely controlled," Zaluzhniy said on Facebook.

"The HIMARS delivered targeted strikes on enemy control points, ammunition, and fuel storage warehouses," Zaluzhniy wrote.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, announced in his nightly video message that 1,028 settlements in Ukraine had been liberated from Russian forces, and another 2,621 are still under Russian control.

Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces "have been able to inflict significant logistical losses on the occupiers," making it increasingly difficult for the Russian army to hold positions on captured territory. His claims could not be independently verified.

"Step by step, we advance, disrupt supplies for the occupiers, identify and neutralize collaborators. The prospect is obvious: the Ukrainian flag will be in all our towns and villages. The only question is time," said Zelenskiy.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-toretsk-six-civiians- killed-russia/31948507.html

Copyright (c) 2022. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.