Ukraine has “significant potential” to advance its armed forces on the battlefield and must increase the intensity of its attacks on Russian forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his late night address on July 21.
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said Zelenskyy A July 21 meeting of Ukraine’s military command defined tasks in tactical areas to be carried out to strengthen positions and supply issues related to the delivery of the latest weapons delivered by Western allies to troops in the field , worked out.
The participants of the meeting agreed that the Ukrainian armed forces “have significant potential to advance our forces on the front lines and inflict new significant casualties on the occupiers,” he said.
Zelenskyy also noted that several members of the US Senate have proposed a resolution the recognition of Russian aggression against Ukraine as genocide.
He said this is the first result of his wife Olena Zelenska’s visit to Washington this week.
A bipartisan group of seven senators introduced the resolution on July 20, shortly after Zelenska spoke to members of Congress about the war and highlighted the suffering of Ukrainian civilians.
The resolution recognizes that Russia’s actions, including forced deportations to Russia and mass atrocity killings of Ukrainian civilians, amount to genocide against the Ukrainian people.
The resolution calls on the United States, along with NATO and European Union allies, to support the government of Ukraine to prevent further acts of Russian genocide against the Ukrainian people, and supports courts and international criminal investigations to prosecute Russian political leaders and hold military personnel accountable.
Russia’s military continued its relentless artillery shelling of civilian areas on July 21 amid what Kyiv said were failed attempts by Russian forces to gain ground.
Ihor Terekhov, the mayor of Kharkiv, said one of the most densely populated areas of Ukraine’s second largest city was under shelling, while the regional governor said two people were killed and 19 injured. Russia denies attacks on civilians.
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Russian forces also bombed a residential area of Nikopol, a town south of Zaporizhzhya, overnight, killing at least two civilians and injuring nine others, including several children.
The head of the military administration of the eastern Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, urged people to evacuate and said Russian forces destroyed schools in Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka and shelled the industrial part of Kramatorsk and the center of Bakhmut.
The Mayor of Southtown Mykolayiv said the town was attacked again on the evening of July 21 after being shelled earlier in the day, injuring one person and damaging infrastructure, power plants and storage areas. He said 13 apartment buildings in the city center were damaged by the blast and debris from the evening’s shelling.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces previously said that they engaged Russian troops in the south and east of the country, killing more than 100 enemy combatants. This number could not be confirmed.
The Ukrainian military also reported heavy Russian shelling on the front line to the east, amid what they said were largely failed attempts by Russian ground forces to advance.
WATCH: Kyiv has urged Ukrainians living in the Zaporizhzhya region to evacuate. While many have fled, some residents, including pensioners and farmers, remain on the front lines in hotly contested villages. They are exposed to Russian army attacks on a daily basis.
The Russian-installed administration in Ukraine’s partially occupied Zaporizhia region said Ukraine carried out a drone attack on a nuclear power plant there, but the reactor was not damaged.
The reports could not be independently verified.
In the meantime, British military intelligence said on July 21 that Russian forces and Moscow-backed separatists continue to attempt small-scale attacks along the eastern frontline.
Russian forces are likely closing in on Ukraine’s second largest power plant at Vuhlehyrska, some 50 kilometers northeast of Donetsk, as Moscow appears to prioritize capturing critical national infrastructure, British intelligence said in its daily bulletin.
WATCH: Shells rained down as our team visited a frontline town in eastern Ukraine where volunteers were trying to evacuate civilians. Current Time reporter Borys Sachalko and cameraman Serhiy Dykun ran for cover, but nearby civilians weren’t quick enough. Two were injured and immediately taken to a safer location for medical treatment.
In Kyiv, the Prosecutor General’s Office reported that law enforcement officials an illegal scheme uncovered to help Ukrainian citizens of military age to leave the country.
A 34-year-old resident of the Kyiv region was behind the program, which offered to organize unhindered crossings for a price of 1,600 euros, the press service of the Prosecutor General’s Office said. The man was arrested while meeting with a “client” who paid him $800.
He planned to cross the border based on documents about studies at institutions in Poland. Shortly after the war began, Zelenskyi banned men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country.
