Ukraine continues counter-offensive, takes control of village in southern Zaporizhzhia
Ukraine recaptured a village in the southern Zaporizhzhia region — the second area claimed since the launch of its counter-offensive last week.
A Russian-installed official acknowledged Ukraine’s gain on the village of Piatykhatky Sunday, saying on Telegram their forces were entrenching themselves there while coming under fire from Russian artillery.
“The enemy’s ‘wave-like’ offensives yielded results, despite enormous losses,” said the official, Vladimir Rogov, on the Telegram messaging app.
According to Rogov, heavy fighting has persisted in the region, though there has been no official word on the action from Ukraine.
If confirmed, it would be Ukraine’s first village gain in nearly a week as the country escalates its offensive heading toward Crimea.
With Ukraine’s counteroffensive underway, both sides are suffering high numbers of military casualties, with Russia experiencing the highest level since the battle for Bakhmut in March, according to UK military officials.
In an update from British intelligence on Sunday, officials said the most intense fighting has centered on the southeastern Zaporizhzhia province, around Bakhmut, and west toward Ukraine’s Donetsk province.
What to know about this stage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine
1. Bakhmut
Ukrainian forces continued advancing around the city of Bakhmut in the east, claiming gains along the Bila Hora-Andriivka and Bila Hora-Kurdyumivka lines southwest of the city that was captured by Russian troops in May. Over the past week, Ukraine’s General Staff reported that Kyiv’s fighters had liberated more than 1.5 square miles of territory in the area, including an important position outside the strategic village of Klishchiivka. Capturing the village itself, which lies on higher ground, could potentially allow Ukrainian soldiers to encircle Russians inside Bakhmut.
2. Tavria
Ukraine claimed to have recaptured several villages in the south of the country as part of its budding push toward the Sea of Azov, with the aim of cutting off Russia’s land bridge linking occupied areas in the east to Crimea. A general in charge of that sector said his troops repelled 27 enemy attacks and inflicted hundreds of casualties on the enemy.
3. Zaporizhzhia
Kyiv’s forces launched a successful missile strike on a Russian base in the occupied town of Tokmak in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, killing as many as 200 soldiers and the town commandant. Overall in the eastern theater, Ukraine’s military said its troops had retaken 65 square miles of territory since the start of the counteroffensive in early June.
4. Berdyansk and Melitopol
Kyiv’s forces reportedly inched forward more than half a mile in the Berdyansk and Melitopol directions in the south in recent days — and a total of more than 5 miles since the beginning of counteroffensive operations in these directions. In Berdyansk, a key port city on the Black Sea, a Ukrainian Storm Shadow missile strike this week leveled a hotel housing Russian military commanders, among them a high-ranking general who was killed.
5. Bakhmut
Kyiv said its troops had advanced about a mile on the flanks of the ravaged city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, which was seized by Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries in May after months of fighting and handed over to the regular units. Moscow claimed it had fought off the assault, and senior US officials said that Ukrainian troops in the east sustained “significant” losses in soldiers and equipment.
6. Belgorod
Pro-Ukrainian rebels have been carrying out raids into the Russian city of Belgorod located on the border with Ukraine, as Kyiv’s forces continued shelling the city and sowing chaos. Thousands of residents have been evacuated from the region, sparking fury in the Kremlin. Partisans taking part in the Belgorod campaign said when Crimea is liberated, they will march on Moscow.
Ukraine has “made small advances” while Russian forces were conducting “relatively effective defensive operations” in Ukraine’s south, officials said in the report.
The Ukrainian military said Sunday that, in the last 24 hours, Russia had carried out 43 airstrikes, four missile strikes, and 51 attacks from multiple rocket launchers.
As Russia focuses its attacks around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Marinka, and Lyman in Donetsk province, Donetsk regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that two civilians were killed and three others were wounded in the past day.
Russian forces have also launched air strikes in other regions in the south and east of the country, killing another civilian in Kherson.
Russia and Ukraine have painted vastly different images of the war in recent weeks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin insisting last week that Ukraine had “no chance” of success in the counter-offensive.
Last week Ukraine said it regained control of about 38 square miles of territory in just over a week, taking back villages in the Donetsk region.
Last Monday, Ukraine said it reclaimed Lobkove, a village adjacent to Piatykhatky in the Zaporizhzhia region.
With Post wires
