ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine – As winter is about to set in, Russia and Ukraine are locked in a fierce exchange of fire on the front line in increasingly urgent attempts to secure gains, big or small, while they still can.
Attacks erupted in the Sumy region in the north, where rockets and mortars hit at least six settlements on Saturday, six months after Russian forces withdrew from the area. And in Russian-occupied southern areas, Ukrainian forces struck targets, including a hotel used by Russian officials and local collaborators.
“It was noisy again in Enerhodar,” the city’s mayor, Dmytro Orlov, who is in exile, said in a message on the Telegram messaging app alongside a photo of a burning building.
Both sides in the south struck deep behind each other’s lines, but in recent days the battlefield positions didn’t seem to move much. In other parts of the country, Russian cruise missiles and drones struck Ukrainian territory, as Moscow’s campaign to cripple Ukraine’s energy supply continued.
After months of no contact, the two senior US and Russian military officials held their second talk in three days. The phone call on Sunday between Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu was aimed at clarifying red lines that could prompt Russia to launch a nuclear attack in Ukraine.
Mr. Austin said in a post on Twitter, “I rejected any pretense of Russian escalation and reaffirmed the value of continued communication amid Russia’s illegal and unwarranted war on Ukraine.”
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the two men spoke, but only said they discussed the situation in Ukraine. Mr. Austin and Mr. Shoigu previously spoke at the Pentagon opening on Friday and then again in May.
The conversation with Mr Austin on Sunday was part of a flurry of calls Mr Shoigu has had with his British, French and Turkish counterparts. The calls came as a Russian retreat from the Kherson region seemed imminent and Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks in several locations over the weekend.
Rocket and artillery fire killed eight people and injured 19 on Saturday, Ukrainian officials reported. Two died in strikes in the Zaporizhzhia region and six in strikes in Donetsk. Russia also unleashed widespread attacks on power stations and heating plants in what Ukraine called some of the heaviest strikes in weeks.
“The geography of this massive new strike is very wide,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday evening.
With the government estimating that 1.5 million homes were without electricity, Mr Zelensky urged Ukrainians who still have electricity to use it sparingly and prepare for blackouts.
Small steps that had been taken to quell the conflict appeared to be in question over the weekend, including the internationally brokered deal to release desperately needed tons of Ukrainian grain for transport around the world.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry again accused Russia of deliberately slowing grain exports to thwart a deal, signed in July, that allowed Ukrainian agricultural exports by sea to resume over the summer.
Russian interference has left Ukraine’s three open ports operating at less than a third of their normal capacity, the ministry said in a statement on Facebook on Sunday. The Kremlin did not respond to Ukraine’s accusations.
Ukraine wants the deal extended, but Russia has threatened to refuse, saying the West is not removing “logistical sanctions” to open markets for its grain and fertilizers. Mr Zelensky says there is a backlog of 150 ships waiting to fulfill contracts to transport Ukrainian wheat, corn, sunflower oil and other products.
“It’s an artificial queue,” he said. “He was born only because Russia deliberately delays the passage of ships.”
Ismini Palla, spokesman for the UN group overseeing the deal, confirmed the backlog but declined to comment on what caused it. She said a team of officials from Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Nations “recognized this problem and are trying to address the backlog”.
Mr. Austin’s conversation with the Russian Minister of Defense, which took place at 7:30 a.m. EST on Sunday, was intended to clarify for the Biden administration why Russian President Vladimir V. Putin is increasingly agitating plus the specter of a nuclear strike in Ukraine. , said two officials.
With his forces on the back foot, Mr Putin has sought to portray the Ukrainian territory he has illegally annexed as part of “Mother Russia”, saying any US-backed attack in those areas would be seen as an attack on Russia.
In talks with his British, French and Turkish counterparts, Mr Shoigu also raised concerns about what he claimed was the possibility of Ukraine using a ‘dirty bomb’ – a conventional explosive containing radioactive material. – according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Russia has not publicly offered any evidence to support its claims, and the accusations have drawn a swift and fierce response from Ukrainian and Western officials.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro I. Kuleba called them “lies” that were “as absurd as they are dangerous”. He wrote on Twitter“We don’t have ‘dirty bombs’, and we don’t plan to acquire any.”
The White House called Mr Shoigu’s claims “demonstrably false”. The British Ministry of Defense has also refuted these allegations.
In the Donetsk region, Russian troops have carried out concerted assaults on the towns of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, the Ukrainian military command announced on Saturday evening. The two towns have long been at the center of fighting as Russia seeks to extend its control over the region, with Ukrainian troops putting up fierce resistance.
But in Kherson, the southern city where Moscow’s position has become increasingly precarious, there are signs that Russian forces have started moving military hardware, Ukrainian officials said.
Kherson, an important industrial port city on the west bank of the Dnipro River, was captured early in the war and is the capital of one of the regions illegally annexed by Russia. But for weeks, Ukrainian forces have been slowly advancing towards Kherson, village by village. They also bombed major road bridges near the city, making it harder for Russia to resupply its troops.
Over the weekend, Moscow-based officials urged residents to use boats to cross the river and travel further into Russian-held territory. Kyiv dismissed the relocation effort as “a propaganda show” intended to scare civilians by claiming Ukraine would bomb the city, but some analysts said there could be other motives.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research organization, noted on Saturday that Russian-backed officials had urged those leaving to bring clothing, valuables and documents, suggesting they did not expect a quick return.
He said the Russians were likely trying to “depopulate” parts of the Kherson region that Ukraine would take over, “undermining the long-term social and economic viability of southern Ukraine.”
Carlotta Gall reported from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Helen Cooper of Washington and Eric Nagourney from New York. Oleksandr Chubko contributed to Zaporizhzhia reporting, Matt Surman of London and James C. McKinley Jr. from New York.