counteroffensive
Ukraine reports small conquests and allegedly attacks Russian ship
Ukrainian soldiers in the Zaporizhia region
© Anatolii Stepanov / AFP
In the past few days, several attacks by Ukraine on Russian positions are said to have failed. But now Kiev has announced small conquests. Russia, on the other hand, claims to have fended off an attack on a warship.
According to its own statements, the Ukrainian army has achieved initial successes in the increasing number of attacks on Russian positions. According to official sources in Kiev, Ukrainian soldiers liberated the town of Blahodatne in the Donetsk region, which was largely occupied by Russia. Troops released video on Sunday showing the Ukrainian flag being raised over a half-ruined building. Prisoners were also taken. There was initially no comment from the Russian official side. The Russian army has been claiming for days that it is repelling the Ukrainian offensive. Officially, there is still only talk of minor attacks on enemy lines.
However, Russian military bloggers close to the Kremlin also reported that Blahodatne had been abandoned because Moscow’s fighters feared encirclement there. Accordingly, the village of Neskutschne was also taken. The village of Lobkove in the Zaporizhia region is said to have been liberated from Russian occupation.
Massive attacks by Ukraine in Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions
For days, the Ukrainian armed forces have been conducting massive attacks in the Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions, among others, in order to liberate their occupied areas. Experts from the US Institute for War Studies (ISW) had previously announced that Ukraine had made minor gains in its counter-offensive, which has not yet been officially confirmed. The Russian troops had also withdrawn combat units from the Kherson region in order to strengthen contingents in other parts of the front, for example in the Zaporizhia region and in Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maljar said in Kiev.
Apparently, the Ukrainian counter-offensive is also at sea. According to Russian information, an attack on a warship in the Black Sea was repelled. The Ukrainian armed forces “attempted in vain” to attack the ship “Priazowje” with “six unmanned high-speed boats” on Sunday night, the Russian Defense Ministry said in the online service Telegram. The “Priasovye” was deployed to guard the Turkstream and Blue Stream pipelines, through which Russian natural gas flows to Turkey.
It is said to have been the second attack on the warship
According to Moscow, the Russian warship destroyed all Ukrainian boats and suffered no damage itself. According to Russian information, a similar attack had already occurred on May 24: At that time, remote-controlled boats attacked the patrol ship “Ivan Churs” in Turkish waters in the Black Sea. According to information from Russia, a US RQ-4B reconnaissance drone “reconnoitred the airspace over the central Black Sea region” before both attacks.
Neither the Russian nor the Ukrainian information can currently be independently verified.