Ukrainian troops pushed deeper into Russian defense lines near Robotyne, a village on the southern front whose liberation was demanded on Monday, a Ukrainian army spokesman said on Tuesday.
“Ukrainian forces have recorded successes in the direction of Novodanylivka and Verbove”, two localities located in the Zaporizhzhia region, Andriy Kovaliov told state media, adding that the troops were holding captured territory and attacking artillery. Russian.
The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed in its daily report that it had repelled two Ukrainian attacks near Verbove and others on different sectors of the southern front, without directly mentioning the situation in Robotyne.
The Ukrainian army has been leading a very difficult counter-offensive in the east and south since June and has so far only taken over a few villages.
In particular, it must deal with strong Russian defences, Moscow’s troops having spent the winter and spring fortifying their positions, with trenches, anti-tank traps and minefields over hundreds of kilometres, particularly in the south.
However, according to analysts, the capture of Robotyne could allow a breakthrough of the Ukrainian army.
For his part, the head of the Russian occupation of the Donetsk region (east), Denis Pushilin, indicated on Russian television that among “the hottest points” on the front currently is the area around Urojaine , about 100 km northeast of Robotyne, where the Ukrainians are on the offensive.
The official also assured that the Russian army “held the flanks” around Bakhmout, a city at the center of the fighting for more than a year and taken by Moscow last May. “The situation there is stabilizing,” he said, while Ukraine has claimed small advances in recent weeks.
Ukrainian strikes also killed three civilians in the town of Gorlivka, in Russian-occupied territory, the mayor installed by the Russian authorities, Ivan Prikhodko, said on Telegram.
Mr. Prikhodko broadcast the photos of burning vehicles and bloody corpses lying on the road.
“The terrible consequences of the bombing of the dairy factory in Gorlivka by the Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Three dead civilians, multiple damage”, he wrote, echoing the rhetoric of the Kremlin which considers the Ukrainian authorities as neo-Nazis. Nazis.
The Ukrainian government told him that it had recovered 84 bodies of its soldiers killed in action. “After identification, the bodies of our defenders will be handed over to their relatives for a dignified burial,” said the Ministry for the Reintegration of the Occupied Territories.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his part hailed the memory of the Ukrainians who died since the start of the invasion.
“We are grateful to all our defenders, whose lives have become the life of Ukraine,” he said on Instagram after a ceremony in Kyiv.
29/08/2023 13:50:36 – Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
