Ninety Ukrainian cities, towns and villages per day experienced Russian air, artillery and/or mortar attacks over the last week, an exclusive analysis by Kyiv Post has identified.
Based on information Kyiv Post analyzed from the daily morning briefings of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, there were a total of 634 instances of population centers across 8 oblasts coming under fire between May 20 and May 26.
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Donetsk Oblast experienced the most instances of its population centers coming under fire with 250, or an average of some 36 centers every day.
Donetsk oblast is the location of intense and ongoing fighting at Bakhmut and Avdiivka and the towns and villages around them.
Tuesday, May 23 was the most intense day of Russian attacks on Ukrainian settlements with 110 communities falling under fire.
| Oblast | # of centers under fire | Daily average |
| Donetsk | 250 | 35.7 |
| Kharkiv | 145 | 20.7 |
| Zaporizhzhia | 66 | 9.4 |
| Kherson | 61 | 8.7 |
| Sumy | 55 | 7.9 |
| Luhansk | 34 | 4.9 |
| Chernihiv | 21 | 3.0 |
| Dnipro | 2 | Less than 1 |
While most Western media focus is on the battle for Bakhmut, a city the size of President Joe Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, Kyiv Post’s evaluation of the Ukrainian military’s data reveals that Russian assaults on Ukraine are spread across more than a thousand kilometers.
It takes approximately 12 hours to drive from Chernihiv in the country’s north to Kherson in its south, which is similar in length to driving from New York to Chicago, or Paris to Prague.
The data also reveals that, beyond Bakhmut in the country’s southeast Donetsk Oblast, Russia continues to maintain pressure and stretch Ukraine’s defenses in its northeast (Kharkiv and Sumy Oblasts) and south (Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts).
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Current Russian shelling and strikes in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson may be salient – attempts to weaken Ukrainian capabilities in the region, such as long-range artillery that could be used in advance of mechanized infantry movements.
It has been widely speculated that a “point of attack” for the mechanized infantry phase of Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be on the now heavily fortified Melitopol axis in the country’s south. This would represent an attempt to break the land corridor that Russia holds in occupied Ukraine, from the Donbas to Crimea, and includes the symbolically and strategically significant Mariupol.
An initial geographical assessment by Kyiv Post of the Ukrainian population centers that have come under attack, particularly in Kharkiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy oblasts, reveals that artillery is being fired from the territory of the Russian Federation. Air raids are clearly undertaken from fields in the Russian Federation.
Russia’s Belgorod oblast, which has been subject to anti-Putin, all-Russian raiding parties in the past week, neighbors Ukraine’s Kharkiv oblast.
The attacks reported by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in this category include aviation-borne assaults and artillery bombardments – including by Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) such as Grads, and mortar bombardments. The military does not report on the intensity of the individual assaults, such as the number of incoming artillery rounds (though it is known that this data is collected but not disclosed).
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