Six people have been killed in the latest shelling in an Eastern Ukrainian town as Russia eyes its next major offensive.

Five bodies were found in the rubble of a house in Toretsk, in the Donetsk region, while the other person died in the hospital, according to emergency services. The Ukrainian military disclosed that Russia appeared to be regrouping for an offensive towards nearby Sloviansk (a city in the Kramatorsk district of the Donetsk region of Ukraine). The city was captured in 2014 by pro-Russian separatists who held it for nearly three months. Now it is once again set to become a key battleground.

Since Russian troops began their invasion on Thursday, February 24, 2022, President Vladimir Putin’s original war aims have been drastically curtailed. The military abandoned its efforts to take the capital, Kyiv, and focused instead on the Eastern Donbas region.

In Other Developments

In another development, Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu, ordered generals to focus on destroying Ukraine’s long-range missile and artillery weapons.

The Defence Ministry said the weapons were being used to shell residential areas of Eastern Ukraine under the control of Russian-backed separatists, and to set fire to wheat fields and grain storage silos.

The Ministry also said that a Russian missile strike on Sunday, July 17, 2022, on the Donetsk village of Kostiantynivka killed up to 250 mercenaries fighting on the Ukrainian side, as well as destroyed 19 military vehicles. However, the claims made by the Ministry cannot be independently verified.

In recent weeks, the US supplied Ukraine with long-range missiles, including precision-guided High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), which Kyiv said are beginning to make a difference on the battlefield. HIMARS is far more accurate than Russia’s equivalent systems and has been credited with a string of recent attacks deep into Russian-held territory.

Other Russian Attacks

In other fighting, Ukraine’s Southern command intimated that those two Russian missiles hit a military target outside the Southern Port of Odesa, while another struck a bridge across the Dniester estuary (at the point where the river Dniester flows into the Black Sea). A fourth was shot down over the Black Sea. Officials said there are no casualties and the fire at the military facility is under control. They added that the bridge has been out of action since Russian forces began targeting it in April 2022.

Meanwhile, British military intelligence said Russia is using mercenaries from the Wagner group (a Russian paramilitary organization) to reinforce the front lines in Ukraine. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) in London said Wagner had been active in recent fighting in the Luhansk region, which inflicted heavy casualties on the Russian paramilitary organisation.

An update by the MoD added that this is leading to a lowering of recruitment standards, including the hiring of convicts, who were being given little training. The MoD added that Russia is also reinforcing its defensive positions across the occupied areas in Southern Ukraine.