Russian shelling heavy in east; Ukraine strikes key bridge - The Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s military pounded residential areas across Ukraine overnight, claiming gains, as Ukrainian forces pressed a counteroffensive to try to take back an occupied southern region, striking the last working bridge over a river in the Russian-occupied Kherson region, Ukrainian authorities said Saturday.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed Saturday its forces had taken control of Pisky, a village on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk, the provincial capital that pro-Moscow separatists have controlled since 2014.

But the Ukrainian military said Saturday that its forces had prevented an overnight advance toward the smaller cities of Avdiivka and Bakhmut.

The Ukrainian governor of neighboring Luhansk province, part of the Donbas region that was overrun by Russian forces last month, claimed that Ukrainian troops still held a small area in the province.

Further west, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region reported more Russian shelling of the city of Nikopol, which lies across the Dnieper River from Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

Ukrainian military intelligence alleged Saturday that Russian troops were shelling the plant from a village just kilometers away, damaging a plant pumping station and a fire station.

They said Russian shelling on Friday night killed one woman and injured two other civilians in the city of Zaporizhzhia.

On Saturday, the deputy director of the Russian-controlled Kakhovka hydropower plant 60 kilometers (37 miles) upriver from the city of Kherson said one of its generating units was out of service after a Ukrainian missile strike.