THE RUSSIAN ARMY has said that it had captured a town in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow’s forces are advancing on the strategic city of Pokrovsk.

Russian forces have “liberated the locality of Novohrodivka” in the Donetsk region, some 20 kilometres from Pokrovsk city, the defence ministry said in a statement.

The town had more than 14,000 inhabitants before the start of the Russian offensive in February 2022, according to official statistics.

Many civilians were evacuated last week in anticipation of the attack.

Moscow has advanced strongly this summer and its troops are now closing in on the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk.

Despite a surprise cross-border attack launched by Kyiv on 6 August in the Kursk region, Moscow continues to steadily gain ground in Donetsk.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said his main aim in Ukraine after 30 months of fighting was to capture the eastern Donbas area – which includes Donetsk – and claimed that Ukraine’s Kursk counter-offensive had made that easier.

Two killed in Sumy

Meanwhile, a Russian air strike on the Ukrainian border city of Sumy killed two people and wounded several others today, the region’s military administration said.

“As a result of the air strike, two people died, (and) four more people were injured, including two children,” military authorities said in a statement.

“Necessary medical assistance is provided to the wounded.”

The city’s mayor, Oleksiy Drozdenko, said homes and vehicles were also destroyed.

“All services are on site,” he said in a Telegram post.

Sumy lies just across the border from Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv launched a shock offensive on 6 August, aimed in part at creating a “buffer zone” inside Russia.

Today’s strike came just over a week after another fatal attack in the city that killed two people and wounded eight others.

Regional authorities said at the time that people in 183 Sumy settlements near the Russian border were being urged to evacuate, and that tens of thousands of others in the area had already done so.