After four and a half months of war in Ukraine, the Russian army this Saturday (9) continued the incessant bombing of the Donetsk region (east of the country), while the US government promised Kyiv new military assistance.

Smoke covers the sky over the city of Severodonetsk in eastern Ukraine. Photo from June 13 – Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP/ND

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on Saturday about the risks of inaction towards Russia: “The eyes of all aggressive political movements and regimes in the world are fixed on what Russia is doing to us,” he wrote on Instagram.

“Will the world be able to bring the real war criminals to justice?” he asked, before warning of the risk of “hundreds of new aggressions” if the world did not respond.

In Donbass, in gradually conquered eastern Ukraine, “the brutal attacks of Russian artillery do not stop for a day,” the Ukrainian president denounced on Saturday evening and called for “modern and powerful” weapons for self-defense.

“In one day, Russia hit Nikolaev (south), Kharkov (northeast), Krivoy Rog (Zelensky’s hometown in the east), villages of the Zaporozhye region (east) … Deliberately hit ordinary houses, civilian objects, people. There are victims, dead, wounded,” he listed.

The Russian army is “regrouping, or rather re-forming its groups and preparing new actions in Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Bakhmut,” Donetsk Region Governor Pavel Kirilenko said on Telegram on Friday.

Zelensky said that he spent Friday in the Dnipro region (center) and congratulated “all Muslims of Ukraine and the world” on the holiday of Eid al-Adha, the holiday of sacrifice. He also told Crimean Tatars that the day would come when “we will congratulate each other on a free Crimea,” a peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that the country’s army inflicted heavy losses on Ukrainians in the Nikolaev and Prydniprovsk regions (the south and center of the country, respectively), and also announced bombings in Kharkov and Donetsk.

By bombing the Donetsk region, where the evacuation of civilians continues, Moscow is trying to take control of the entire Donbas basin, its strategic goal since it withdrew from the Kyiv region at the end of March.

Bombing day and night

On the battlefield, the Ukrainian General Staff reported on Saturday about more Russian bombardments in the east of the country and in Kharkov, but without a ground attack, with the exception of an attempt on Dolomitnoe, near Bakhmut (east).

“The entire front line is under incessant shelling,” Kirilenko said on Friday.

“They continue to bomb in the direction of Donetsk (…) Bakhmut was bombed, Slavyansk was bombed day and night, Kramatorsk…,” added the governor of Donetsk.

Ukrainian emergency services report that six civilians were injured (four of them hospitalized) in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, when a rocket hit a residential building.

In the Luhansk region, which together with Donetsk forms the Donbass mining basin, the region’s governor Sergei Gaidai said the Russians were targeting the Donetsk region.

“We try to contain them (…), but when they cannot advance, they create hell by bombing all possible terrain,” he warned.

Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk called on residents of the Russian-occupied zones to leave these areas at all costs and warned that there would be “major battles.”

According to the Ukrainian authorities, five people were killed in the region in the last 24 hours, and seven were injured.

Oleksandr Vilkul, the mayor of Kryvyi Rih, said Russia bombed the city with cluster bombs, killing one person and injuring two.

In addition, according to local authorities, the Russian army also began burning crops.

“There are big fires in the fields, which are deliberately kindled by the enemy. Plantations are trying to destroy by all means. They are bombing agricultural vehicles, harvesters,” they said.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, considered one of the planet’s great breadbaskets, has sent food prices skyrocketing and fueled global inflation.

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According to a Pentagon source, the $400 million in new military aid includes four Himars multiple rocket launchers and 155mm rockets. The goal is to improve Ukraine’s ability to attack the Russian army’s weapons depots and supply chains.

Washington has already provided Kyiv with $6.9 billion in military aid since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24.

In addition to helping, Washington stepped up pressure at the diplomatic level. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called on the Chinese government to condemn Russian “aggression” in Ukraine during a meeting with Beijing Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Saturday.

And Britain received the first group of 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers to be trained on British soil.

“This massive training program is the next step in the UK’s support for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in their fight against Russian aggression,” Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said in a statement.