MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Sunday that Russian forces had captured a new settlement inside Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, but Ukraine’s top commander said Kyiv’s troops had made gains elsewhere, recapturing three villages in eastern Donetsk region.
After failing to advance on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in the early weeks of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops have focused on the eastern Donbas region, announcing almost daily the capture of new villages.
Reuters could not independently verify battlefield reports from either side.
On Sunday, the Russian Defence Ministry announced the capture of Filia, a village inside Dnipropetrovsk region, which is not one of the four regions Russia illegally annexed seven months after invading its smaller neighbour. Ukraine made no acknowledgement that the village of Filia had changed hands.
Moscow says it has been making inroads into Dnipropetrovsk region. But Ukrainian forces have been pressing to recapture villages in the Donetsk region – the focal point of the Russian advance – and to prevent any further movement into Dnipropetrovsk.
Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, wrote on Telegram that Kyiv’s forces had retaken the villages of Mykhailivka, Zelenyi Hai, and Volodymyrivka.
Zelenyi Hai, whose recapture was announced in a military statement on Saturday, lies next to Dnipropetrovsk region, while the other two villages are near the town of Pokrovsk, the focus of heavy fighting for months.
Syrskyi described conditions near Pokrovsk, seen as one of the Russian military’s priority targets in the region, as “truly difficult. The enemy has been concentrating its main efforts on this sector. But we have to hold the line.”
Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency said in a statement that it had staged a joint operation with a military unit to recapture another village – Novomykhailivka, south of Pokrovsk.
In Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, a Russian artillery strike killed a woman in the town of Kupiansk and wounded two residents.
Kupiansk was captured by Russian troops in the early weeks of the war and retaken by Ukrainian forces later that year, but has come under fierce Russian attack in recent months.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Jan Harvey, Rod Nickel)
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