The Ukrainian army claimed Sunday the capture of three villages in the south of the country. The villages of Blagodatne, Neskuchne and Makarivka are the first announced territorial gains of the Ukrainian assault on Russian positions on this part of the front, where President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged “counteroffensive actions”.
“Neskuchne in the Donetsk region is again under the Ukrainian flag,” the state border guard service said. Earlier, kyiv announced that its troops had taken over the village of Blagodatné, also in the Donetsk region. And, in the evening, the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense Ganna Maliar announced that a third small town, Makarivka, near Blagodatné, had fallen into the hands of troops from kyiv.
Moscow has reported heavy fighting on Ukraine’s southern front for nearly a week, but Kiev has largely kept quiet about its strategy, refusing to confirm whether it was the big offensive its military has been planning for months. , bolstered by crucial Western arms supplies.
“The glorious soldiers of the 68th brigade…liberated the locality of Blagodatné,” the Ukrainian army ground forces posted on Facebook, posting a video showing soldiers with a Ukrainian flag in a destroyed building. This village, which had less than 1,000 inhabitants before the war, is located on the border of the Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions in southeastern Ukraine.
According to the spokesman of the “Tavria Front” defense units that took part in the operation, Valery Cherchene, the Ukrainians captured two Russian soldiers and pro-Russian separatist fighters. “The Ukrainian flag was hung on Blagodatné,” he added on television. This is the first territorial gain announced in months by Kiev apart from the few hundred meters recently gained on the outskirts of Bakhmout, a devastated city in eastern Ukraine, which Moscow claimed to have taken in May.
Remaining evasive, President Volodymyr Zelensky had admitted on Saturday that his army was carrying out “counter-offensive and defensive actions” on the front while refusing to talk about it in detail. “Our military must be trusted and I trust them,” Volodymyr Zelensky added. “I am grateful to our soldiers for this day […]. THANKS ! Thank you for every step, for every fight, for every occupier destroyed! »
Russian President Vladimir Putin had meanwhile assured the day before that the great Ukrainian counter-offensive expected for months had “begun”, but that the forces of Kiev had “failed to achieve their objectives” after several days of fierce fighting.
While he assured that the Ukrainian troops suffered heavy losses, he asserted that kyiv retained its “offensive potential”. The Russian Defense Ministry released video on Saturday showing a column of destroyed Western-made tanks and armored vehicles, some still smoking carcasses, in the southern Donetsk region.
He also assured that Ukraine unsuccessfully attacked one of its warships overnight from Saturday to Sunday while patrolling the Black Sea, near two gas pipelines used to transport Russian hydrocarbons to Turkey.
According to him, all the Ukrainian remote control boats were destroyed and the Russian ship, the Priazovie, was not damaged.
In southern Ukraine, evacuations continued after floods caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, a disaster for which both sides blame each other.
According to the new report reported by the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior, six people died in these floods and 35 are missing, including 7 children, in the territories which are under the control of Kiev.
In the territories occupied by the Russians, officials installed by Moscow reported this week 8 dead and 13 missing in connection with this same tragedy.
In Kherson, the regional capital, the waters have started to recede in some neighborhoods, despite the rain, while evacuations continue in others, AFP journalists have noted.
The first residents returned home to see the damage, such as Oleksiï Guessine, 60, who sees his grocery store in the center of the city for the first time in six days.
Wearing rubber boots and in the rain, he shovels out the waste and earth that have been brought in by the water. “The damage is extensive. In the store, I had water up to my chest, everything below was damaged,” he told AFP.
According to an employee of the Kherson meteorological center, Laura Moussian, the water level has decreased locally by 1.7 m. “There could be heavy rain again, which could significantly slow the pace of the recession,” she said.
There is also concern about possible water contamination, which has engulfed at least three cemeteries, oil storage terminals and landfills, according to Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriï Kostine.
Nearly 450 tons of turbine oil also spilled into the waters of the Dnieper and then the Black Sea, he added.
