Sawt Falasteen - Russian strike kills six as Ukraine marks defenders day

Debris, broken glass and bodies were strewn around a market in Kherson city, which lies on the western bank of the Dnipro river, a de-facto front line between Russian forces in the east and Ukrainian forces in the west.

The regional prosecutor's office had reported seven killed, but later revised this to six, saying that doctors stabilised one of those presumed dead.

"Around 9 am (0600 GMT) on October 1, Russian forces struck the centre of Kherson, allegedly with cannon artillery. The shelling took place near a local market and a public transport stop," it said on Telegram.

Moscow's troops withdrew from the capital Kherson in November 2022, retreating to the other side of the Dnipro, but they have kept up intense shelling of the city.

The deadly attack came as Ukraine held a minute of silence remembering the country's war dead on defenders day, the third since Russia invaded in 2022.

President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the army in a speech to soldiers, acknowledging that his troops had suffered "painful moments" on what he said was a "difficult" path to victory.

"Inside we are all screaming with pain for each fallen hero, screaming with hatred for the evil that has come to our land," he said.

Neither Ukraine or Russia disclose how many of their soldiers have been killed in the conflict, but independent estimates number in the tens of thousands on each side.

- 'Our guys are advancing' -

Russia has been advancing on the eastern front for months, and on Tuesday claimed to capture two more frontline villages including one just 13 kilometres (eight miles) from the key Ukrainian supply hub of Pokrovsk.

Responding to reports Russian troops were closing in on another key Ukrainian-held town, Vugledar, the Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin regularly received battlefield reports.

The Kremlin has captured dozens of villages in eastern Ukraine this year, pressing ahead even as Kyiv's forces mount a cross-border offensive into the Russian region of Kursk.

The Ukrainian army is suffering from fatigue after more than two-and-a-half years of war and relentless Russian bombardment.

- 'Work with both' -

As Moscow pressed ahead in the east, Russia announced plans on Monday to boost its defence budget by almost 30 percent next year as it drives resources into the Ukraine war.

Moscow had already ramped up military spending to levels not seen since the Soviet Union era, pumping out missiles and drones to fire on Ukraine and paying lucrative salaries to its hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting on the front lines.

The latest planned increase in spending will take Russia's defence budget to an unprecedented 13.5 trillion rubles ($145 billion) in 2025, legislative documents showed.

Planned spending on "national defence" is more than twice that allocated to areas Moscow labels as "social policy".

But the Kremlin on Tuesday denied Moscow had skewed its priorities.

"This is a carefully balanced, calibrated budget. The state maintains the fulfilment of social obligations," Peskov said.

Ukraine, which has also been forced to accelerate its own military spending, will allocate more than 60 percent of the country's entire budget to defence and security next year.

But Russia's $145-billion defence budget dwarfs Ukraine's at $54 billion, with Kyiv reliant on Western military and financial aid to continue fighting.

NATO's new chief Mark Rutte on Tuesday downplayed fears over the impact of a potential Donald Trump victory in the upcoming US elections, amid concerns a Trump administration would waver in support for Ukraine.

"I'm not worried. I know both candidates very well. I worked for four years with Donald Trump. He was the one pushing us to spend more, and he achieved," Rutte said ahead of a formal handover ceremony.

X.Habash--SF-PST