Aerial view taken on Nov. 17, 2022, showing the site where a missile strike killed two men in the eastern Poland village of Przewodow, near the border with war-ravaged Ukraine on Nov. 15, 2022. (Wojtek Radwanski and Damien Simonart/AFP)
Following the Russian withdrawal from the northwestern bank of the Dnipro River in the southern Kherson region, the focus of fighting has shifted eastward, according to both Russian and Ukrainian sources.
Fighting is reportedly heaviest in the eastern Donetsk area, which together with Luhansk comprises the Russian-speaking Donbas region.
In late September, Russia formally annexed Donetsk and Luhansk, along with the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Since then, Moscow has viewed all four regions as Russian Federation territory.
Polish soldiers pass on Nov. 17, 2022, by the police checkpoint next to the site where a missile strike killed two men in the eastern Poland village of Przewodow, near the border with war-ravaged Ukraine on Nov. 15, 2022. (Wojtek Radwanski and Damien Simonart/AFP)
On Nov. 17, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said that ongoing fighting in Donetsk now centered on the towns of Pavlivka, Vuhledar, Maryianka, and Bakhmut.
Fighting is also reportedly underway in the towns of Avdiivka and Bilohorivka, according to Ukrainian sources.
Pro-Russian sources are also reporting heavy fighting in Donetsk, where they say Ukrainian forces have sustained heavy losses—in both manpower and equipment—over the past 24 hours.
In a statement carried by Russia’s TASS news agency on Nov. 17, the military wing of the pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic said that dozens of Ukrainian troops had been killed and large quantities of military equipment destroyed.
Earlier this week, Moscow claimed that Donetsk’s town of Pavlivka had fallen to Russian forces and their local allies after several days of fierce fighting.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, as many as 1,400 Ukrainian troops were killed in several days of fighting in and around the strategic town.
The Epoch Times was unable to verify field reports by either side.
Redeployment to Eastern Front
Ukrainian forces have moved into Kherson and other strategic positions near the Dnipro.
Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, say there’s evidence that Russian forces committed atrocities against local civilians before their withdrawal from the area.
Russian officials deny the claims and accuse Ukrainian forces of staging “extrajudicial reprisals” against pro-Russian residents of Kherson city.
The Russian retreat has been widely hailed as a major victory for Kyiv.
But it has also served to free up substantial amounts of Russian manpower and equipment, which are reportedly being redeployed to the eastern front and the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region.
Meanwhile, Russian forces on Nov. 17 continued to strike energy infrastructure deep inside Ukrainian territory, leading to widespread power disruptions throughout the country.
According to Kyiv, this week has seen the most intense bombardments of Ukrainian infrastructure since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine almost nine months ago.
“Missiles are flying over Kyiv right now,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told the Interfax Ukraine news agency on Nov. 17.
Russian forces, he added, were currently striking gas-production facilities and armament factories in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
On the same day, Ukrainian sources also reported massive explosions in Kyiv and the southern port city of Odesa.
Poland Missile Incident Fallout
Meanwhile, in a rare show of disunity between the White House and Kyiv, U.S. President Joe Biden sharply disputed Zelenskyy’s assertions that a missile that hit Polish territory this week had been fired by Russia.
“That’s not the evidence,” Biden told reporters on Nov. 17 upon his return to Washington following a G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.
Two days earlier, a missile had struck a grain-drying facility in the Polish village of Przewodow, killing two people.
Przewodow is located only 3 1/2 miles from Poland’s border with Ukraine.
The incident occurred as Russian forces continued to strike targets inside Ukraine, prompting initial speculation that the missile had been fired by Russia.
While Polish and Ukrainian officials were quick to issue statements blaming Russia for the incident, it soon emerged that the projectile was most likely a Ukrainian air-defense missile.
At a U.N. Security Council meeting held on Nov. 16, Russian envoy to the U.N. Vasily Nebenzya accused Warsaw and Kyiv of trying to “provoke a direct clash between Russia and NATO.”
Zelenskyy “couldn’t fail to have information that it was Ukrainian missiles fired by an air-defense system that flew over to Poland,” TASS quoted Nebenzya as saying.
“It wasn’t just deliberate disinformation, but a conscious attempt to prompt NATO, which is waging a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, to get involved in a direct clash with our country,” he said.
The Polish government “wasn’t much different,” Nebenzya added, noting that Warsaw had initially said “with full confidence” that Poland had “come under Russian attack.”
Nevertheless, Kyiv appears to have doubled down on the claims and has demanded access to the blast site in southeastern Poland where a joint Polish–American team is now investigating the incident.
Jakub Kumoch, an adviser to Polish President Andrzej Duda, said on Nov. 17, “If both parties agree, and as far as I know there will be no objection from the American side, such access could be obtained soon.”
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