Russian artillery shells rained down on Nikopol, a Ukrainian city near Zaporizhzhia, Europe's largest nuclear power plant, while missiles struck near the Black Sea port of Odesa over the weekend, the Reuters news agency reported.
Ukraine's General Staff said in its daily update on Monday that Russian forces "inflicted damage from artillery and multiple rocket launcher systems in the areas of Soledar, Zaytseve and Bilogorivka settlements" in Ukraine's eastern Bakhmut region.
Russian troops also continued to focus their efforts on "establishing full control over the territories of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, maintaining the captured areas of Kherson and parts of the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Mykolaiv regions," the Ukrainian General Staff reported, as cited by Reuters.
Zelensky has called for vigilance, saying Moscow could try "something particularly ugly" ahead of Ukraine's Independence Day on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
He said in a nightly video address that "all partners of Ukraine have been informed about what the terrorist state can prepare for this week."
He elaborated that he spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron "about all the threats," and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has also been "informed about all this."
Zelensky said he was sure UN Secretary-General António Guterres "will also react."
Zelensky said in his video message, as quoted by Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform: "They and other world leaders received appropriate signals from us. Everyone understands everything. They understand what the occupiers are doing and what it threatens. And they understand that Ukraine will not tolerate this."
Wednesday, August 24, will mark 31 years since Ukraine regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and also exactly six months since Russia invaded on February 24.
The head of the Polish president's International Policy Bureau, Jakub Kumoch, said at the time that Duda's participation in Ukrainian Independence Day celebrations was “an important element of the process of building regional and international endorsement for the territorial integrity of Ukraine."
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Source: ukrinform.net, Reuters