Russia says it thwarts big attack in Ukraine
Moscow said on Monday it had thwarted a major offensive against its forces in eastern Ukraine, but Ukrainian officials dismissed the report and both sides said the Ukrainian military had advanced elsewhere along the front line.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine had attacked on Sunday morning with six mechanized and two tank battalions in southern Donetsk, where Moscow has long suspected Ukraine would seek to drive a wedge through Russian-controlled territory, Reuters reported.
“The enemy’s goal was to break through our defenses in the most vulnerable, in its opinion, sector of the front,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement said. “The enemy did not achieve its tasks, it had no success.”
Further north, near the long-contested city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces were reported to have been “moving forward”.
An armed forces video showed Russian positions under fire and Russian guerrilla commander Yevgeny Prigozhin said Ukrainian forces had retaken part of the settlement of Berkhivka, north of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, calling it a “disgrace”.
Prigozhin’s private Wagner army captured Bakhmut last month after the longest battle of the war and handed its positions there to regular Russian troops.
Russia’s Defense Ministry released video of what it said showed several Ukrainian armored vehicles in a field blowing up after being hit. Reuters geo-located it to near Velyka Novosilka, a village west of Vuhledar in southern Donetsk region, but could not verify the date.
The ministry said Russian forces killed 250 Ukrainian soldiers as well as destroying 16 tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles and 21 armored combat vehicles.
Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, who is in charge of Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, was in the area, the ministry said.