A Russian ammunition depot was targeted by Ukrainian forces overnight, resulting in a massive blast captured on social media.
The Ukrainian military's southern command said the rocket strike targeted the depot in Russian-held Nova Kakhovka, about 35 miles (55 kilometres) east of the important Black Sea port city of Kherson, which is also occupied by Russian forces.
Video on social media showed a massive explosion. The nature of the strike suggested that Ukrainian forces used US-supplied multiple-launch High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to strike the area.
Russia's Tass news agency offered a different account, saying that the target was a mineral fertilizer storage facility that exploded and that a market, hospital, and houses were damaged. Some of the ingredients in fertilizer can be used for ammunition.
Ukrainian authorities also said that Russian fire struck the southern city of Mykolaiv on Tuesday morning, hitting two medical facilities and residential buildings. Four people were wounded in the shelling attack, Mykolaiv regional governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram.
Air raid sirens sounded early Tuesday morning in the western city of Lviv and other areas of Ukraine as Russian forces continued to make advances.
According to a Tuesday intelligence briefing from the British military, Russia is continuing to make small, incremental gains in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, where heavy fighting led the province's governor last week to urge its 350,000 remaining residents to move to safer places in western Ukraine.
Yet many in the Donbas, a fertile industrial region in eastern Ukraine made of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, refuse or are unable to flee, despite scores of civilians being killed and wounded each week.
The British intelligence briefing said Russia had seized the Ukrainian town of Hryhorivka and continued to push toward the Donetsk province cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Russian forces are likely maintaining military pressure on Ukrainian forces whilst regrouping and reconstituting for further offensives in the near future, the intelligence briefing said.
However, Russia may be relying more heavily on private forces, like the Wagner mercenary group, to avoid a general mobilization, the British said.
