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The Ukrainian military and regional officials on August 22 reported Russian drone and missile strikes on Zaporizhzhya, Kryviy Rih, and Kupyansk as Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had repelled drone attacks on the Moscow and Bryansk regions while temporarily closing three airports in the capital.
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One person was wounded and 20 buildings were damaged in an overnight Russian missile attack on Kryviy Rih, in the Dnipropetrovsk regional Governor Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram.
Russia also struck the southern city of Zaporizhzhya overnight, causing damage but no casualties, the secretary of the Zaporizhya City Council, Anatoliy Kurtev, reported early on August 22.
“Overnight, the enemy attacked Zaporizhzhya again. As a consequence of the blast wave, four high-rise buildings sustained damage,” Kurtev wrote on Telegram. Russian forces have repeatedly launched attacks on Zaporizhzya.
Russian troops shelled Kupyansk and Vovchansk in the eastern Kharkiv region overnight, Oleh Synyehubov, the region’s governor, said on August 22.
“Four residential buildings were damaged and destroyed,” Synyehubov said on Telegram, adding that a woman was slightly wounded.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said early on August 22 that four drones were shot down overnight — two over the Moscow region and two over the Bryansk region, some 400 kilometers southwest of Moscow.
The Russian state news agency TASS reported that three Moscow airports — Vnukovo, Domodedovo, and Sheremetyevo — briefly suspended flights, without giving a reason for the suspension.
Moscow airports have suspended flights several times recently due to what authorities said were Ukrainian drone attacks.
The ministry also said on August 22 that a Russian warplane destroyed what it said was a “Ukrainian reconnaissance boat” that was sailing in the vicinity of Russian gas production facilities in the Black Sea. The claim could not be independently verified.
On the battlefield, heavy fighting has been continuing in the east and south of Ukraine, with the General Staff of the Ukrainian military reporting that a Russian counterattack had been repelled in Bakhmut, the city in the eastern region of Donetsk that was battered by months of heavy fighting before it fell to Russian forces in May.
Ukrainian forces continued their offensive operations in the Melitopol area in the south, the military said in its daily report on August 22.
Over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian troops fought 30 close-combat battles across the front line, it said.
On August 22, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said that Ukrainian troops have liberated Robotyne, a village along an important road leading to the strategic city of Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhye region, after two months of fierce fighting.
“Soldiers of the 47th brigade battled their way into Robotyne,” Malyar wrote on Telegram.
Soldiers posted a video online showing tearful women greeting them and said the evacuation of civilians from the village was being organized.
The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) confirmed that Ukrainian troops had achieved “significant tactical successes” in Robotyne on August 20-21.
