Ukraine’s military reported that heavy fighting continued on September 29 following a night of air strikes that included penetration deeper inside Russia by Kyiv’s drone arsenal, while U.S. President Joe Biden declared on social media that “Ukraine will win this war.”
In its evening briefing, Ukraine’s General Staff said that “the Russian invaders are continuing to storm positions of the Ukrainian defenders [with] the occupiers actively attacking in the [strategically important] Pokrovsk and Kurakhove directions.”
It added that “about 20 settlements in Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv regions were affected by [Russian] artillery and mortar shelling.”
The update came after Ukraine reported multiple injuries from overnight Russian drone attacks in a handful of regions, while Russian defense officials claimed to have shot down 125 Ukrainian drones in the latest reflection of Kyiv’s increasing efforts to take the 2 1/2-year-old war to Russian territory.
The governor of Russia’s southwestern region of Belgorod said one man had died in the town of Shebekino, near the Ukrainian border.
Russia’s Defense Ministry suggested Ukrainian cross-border attacks were increasingly focused on its Volgograd region, to the east of the Kursk region where Ukrainian forces launched a surprise incursion in July that is thought to have captured around 1,300 square kilometers of Russian territory.
One of the attacks in Volgograd was reportedly near a major ammunition warehouse in Kotluban that has previously been targeted, but it was unclear if there was any damage.
On the diplomatic front, Biden posted on social media videos of counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s recent visit to the White House and stated the “Ukraine will win this war.”
“And the United States will continue to stand beside them every step of the way,” Biden added.
Ukraine’s military meanwhile said its air defenses had shot down 15 of 22 Russian attack drones detected in at least four regions of the country overnight, and said five more of those drones were thwarted by other “countermeasures.”
The head of the Ukrainian military administration in the southern region of Zaporizhzhya, Ivan Fedorov, said high-rise buildings and private homes had been struck overnight and “there may be people under the rubble.”
“Fourteen people were wounded in Zaporizhzhya today after a Russian strike. Debris removal has been continuing all day and two people were rescued from the rubble,” he wrote on Telegram.
Zaporizhzhya has recently seen near-daily destruction and injuries from air strikes.
“About a hundred glide bombs are being launched by Russia against Ukraine every day. This is a constant reminder to all our partners who can help that we need more range for Ukraine, we need more air defense for Ukraine, we need more sanctions against Russia,” Fedorov said.
The area hosts Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian occupation since early in the 31-month-old full-scale invasion.
On September 28, Ukrainian officials said Supreme Court justice Leonid Loboyko was killed in a Russian attack on his vehicle while he was delivering humanitarian aid to residents of a village in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
The Ukrainian General Staff said around one-quarter of the 165 combat clashes in the past 24 hours took place in the region around Pokrovsk, the strategic frontline city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region where Russia is said to have been advancing in recent months.
RFE/RL cannot independently confirm reports by either side of battlefield developments or casualties in many areas of the heaviest fighting.
