A view shows a destroyed residential building in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. (file)
Kyiv, Ukraine:
Ukraine confirmed Monday that it had driven Russian troops from an eighth village in its two-week-old retaliatory offensive on the country’s most direct route to the Sea of Azov coast.
A Russian-installed official said on Sunday that Ukraine had taken control of the village of Pyatikhatki in the southern Zaporizhzhya region. He later said Moscow had pushed him out and on Monday morning said Ukraine was attacking again.
Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Mlyar said that Ukrainian forces had not only retaken Pyatkhatki but had advanced seven km (4.3 mi) into Russian lines in two weeks, occupying 113 km² (44 sq mi) of land. was captured.
“During two weeks of offensive operations in the Berdyansk and Melitopol directions, eight settlements were liberated,” Hanna Maliar said on Telegram, referring to two towns on the Russian-held coastline.
The perceived capture of the villages marks incremental gains for Ukraine, highlighting the challenge of breaking through lines Moscow has spent months fortifying. However, Pyatkhatki is important, as it is about 90 km from the coast.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the troops’ efforts and said he would continue talks with Western allies for an early supply of arms and ammunition.
“Our troops are moving forward, position by position, step by step, we are moving forward,” he said on Sunday evening. “The main thing is the speed of supply.”
On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had repelled Ukraine’s attempt to capture the village of Novodonetske in the eastern Donetsk region, one of the areas focused on by Kiev’s counter-offensive.
It released a video showing what a soldier said was a captured French-made tank. Kiev did not comment and Reuters could not verify the latest battlefield accounts.
Ukraine has acknowledged attacks on several parts of the 1,000 km (600 mi) front line, in a long-awaited counteroffensive to regain 18% of its territory captured by Russia.
But Kiev has imposed an information blackout on current and future battles for security reasons. Analysts say the main phase of the counter-offensive is yet to begin.
Both sides appear to have taken heavy losses in the recent fighting and both say they have lost fewer soldiers than their enemies.
Reporting on the Pyatkhatki battle, Russian-established officer Vladimir Rogov said on Telegram, “The enemy’s ‘wave-like’ attacks yielded results despite heavy losses.”
Redeployment?
While Ukraine does what Western governments and analysts say is investigating the attacks to test Russian forces, officials from two NATO member states said Moscow is redeploying some of its forces as it Wants to predict where Ukraine will strike.
UK and Estonian intelligence officials said Russia was moving east along the front line from areas south of the Dnipro River flooded by the destruction of the massive Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on 6 June.
Estonia said that the Ukrainians were systematically approaching for a retaliatory strike.
“We will not see an offensive in the next seven days,” Colonel Margo Grosberg, commander of the Estonian Defense Forces intelligence centre, said on Friday.
Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for the opening of a reservoir the size of the US Great Salt Lake. Flooding has destroyed homes and farms in a swath of southern Ukraine along both sides of the front line in the Kherson region. The death toll has risen to 52, with over 11,000 people evacuated.
Moscow and Kiev have blamed each other for the attack, while a team of legal experts helping Ukraine investigate said on Friday it was “highly likely” that the collapse was caused by explosives planted by the Russians. Were.
The flooding has made any cross-river assault in the area exceedingly difficult, Michael Kaufmann, a military analyst, wrote on Twitter, although it would always have been a risky operation.
Ukrainian officials say more than half of the flooded areas are on the Russian side and prefer areas on the Russian-occupied side of the river, and Russia’s defense ministry warned Monday that mosquito-borne diseases such as West Nile fever could spread. Can out in the field.
The United Nations said on Sunday that Moscow had refused its help to assist residents affected by the breach.
“Aid cannot be denied to those who need it,” Denis Browne, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, said in a statement.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)