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Ukraine has “significant potential” to advance its forces on the battlefield and must increase the intensity of its attacks against Russian forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his July 21 speech.
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Zelensky said a meeting of the Ukrainian military command on July 21 defined the tasks in the tactical areas that must be carried out to reinforce the positions and solved the supply problems related to the delivery of the last weapons arriving from the Western allies to the troops on the ground.
Meeting participants agreed that Ukrainian forces “have significant potential to advance our forces to the frontline and inflict further significant casualties on the occupiers”, he said.
Zelenskiy also noted that several members of the US Senate have proposed a resolution recognizing Russia’s aggression against Ukraine as genocide.
He said that was 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, highlighting the suffering of Ukrainian civilians.
The resolution recognizes that Russia’s actions, including forced deportations to Russia and the killing of Ukrainian civilians in mass atrocities, constitute genocide against the Ukrainian people.
The resolution calls on the United States, along with NATO and European Union allies, to support the Ukrainian government in preventing further acts of Russian genocide against the Ukrainian people and supports international criminal tribunals and investigations to hold Russian political leaders and military personnel accountable.
The Russian military continued its relentless artillery bombardment of areas populated by civilians earlier on July 21 amid what Kyiv said 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 city was bombed, while the regional governor said two people were killed and 19 injured. Russia denies targeting civilians.
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Russian forces also shelled a residential area in Nikopol, a town south of Zaporizhzhya, killing at least two civilians and wounding nine others overnight, including several children.
The head of the eastern Donetsk region’s military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, urged people to evacuate, saying Russian forces had destroyed schools in Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka and shelled the industrial part of Kramatorsk and central Bakhmut.
The mayor of the southern city of Mykolaiv said the city was again targeted on the evening of July 21 after being bombed earlier in the day, injuring one person and damaging infrastructure, energy installations and storage areas. He said 13 downtown residential buildings were damaged by the shock wave and debris from the evening shelling.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces said earlier that they engaged Russian troops in the south and east of the country, killing more than 100 enemy combatants. This figure could not be confirmed.
The Ukrainian military also reported heavy Russian shelling on the eastern front line amid what they said were largely unsuccessful 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 in hotly contested frontline villages. They face daily attacks from the Russian army.
The Russian-installed administration in the partially occupied Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhya said Ukraine carried out a drone strike on a nuclear power plant there, but the reactor was not damaged.
The reports could not be independently verified.
Meanwhile, British military intelligence said on July 21 that Russian forces and Moscow-backed separatists continued to attempt small-scale assaults along the eastern front line.
Russian forces are likely closing in on Ukraine’s second-largest power station at Vuhlehyrska, about 50 kilometers northeast of Donetsk, as Moscow appears to be prioritizing capturing critical national infrastructure, the services said. British intelligence in their 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 took cover, but nearby civilians were not quick enough. Two were injured and immediately taken for medical attention to a safer location.
In Kyiv, the Prosecutor General’s Office reported that law enforcement officers discovered an illegal scheme to help Ukrainian citizens of service age to leave the country.
A 34-year-old resident of the Kyiv region was behind the scheme, which offered to organize unhindered crossings for a price of 1,600 euros, said the press service of the general prosecutor’s office. The man was arrested while meeting a “client”, who paid him $800.
He planned to cross the border on the basis of documents concerning studies in Polish institutions. Zelenskiy banned men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country shortly after the start of the war.
