LAST UPDATE | 12 Jun 2023
KYIV HAS SAID it had wrested seven villages in eastern and southern Ukraine from Russian forces since the weekend.
Ukraine also said it made small gains near the eastern city of Bakhmut after launching a long-awaited counteroffensive with Western weapons to claw back territory.
“Seven settlements were liberated,” Deputy Defence Minister Ganna Malyar said on Telegram.
These were the villages of Lobkovo, Levadne and Novodarivka in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, she said.
Malyar said Ukrainian forces had also regained control of the village of Storozheve in the south of the Donetsk region, near three villages recaptured on Sunday.
“The area of the territory taken under control amounted to 90 square kilometres,” Malyar said.
The Ukrainian defence ministry said its forces had advanced “250 to 700 metres” into the direction of the flashpoint city of Bakhmut.
Russia said earlier today that it repelled Ukrainian attacks in the same area in the Donetsk region near Velyka Novosilka.
It also said it fought off Ukrainian attacks around the nearby village of Levadne in the neighbouring southern region of Zaporizhzhia.
The various claims by Moscow and Kyiv could not be verified independently.
“Ukrainian forces made visually verified advances in western Donetsk Oblast and western Zaporizhzhia Oblast, which Russian sources confirmed but sought to downplay,” the US-based Institute for the Study of War said in an analytical note today.
Yesterday, three people were killed and at least another 23 wounded as Russia shelled a rescue boat evacuating civilians from Russian-controlled territory, the Kherson region prosecutors’ office said.
Analysts at Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War say that Kyiv’s forces have launched counteroffensive operations in at least four front-line areas.
After months of building expectations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed on Saturday that a counter offensive against Russian forces had begun.
Then yesterday, they announced the recapture of the three villages, the first significant gains in the new campaign.
“Neskuchne of the Donetsk region is under the Ukrainian flag again,” said the state border guard service.
Ukraine’s army said its troops had taken the nearby village of Blagodatne. Ground forces released a video showing soldiers hoisting a Ukrainian flag over a destroyed building.
Military spokesman Valeriy Shershen said in televised remarks the village sat on the border of the eastern region of Donetsk and the southern region of Zaporizhzhia, where Moscow has reported heavy Ukrainian assaults over the past week.
Ukraine’s forces had captured several Russian and pro-Russian troops, Shershen added.
Later Sunday, deputy defence minister Ganna Malyar said Ukraine’s forces had retaken a third village, Makarivka, northwest of Blagodatne.
Major Ukrainian military successes in the Zaporizhzhia region could potentially enable its forces to break through the land bridge that connects Russia with the Crimean peninsula it annexed from Ukraine. This would be a major reversal for Moscow.
Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine had made an unsuccessful attack Saturday night on a Russian warship in the Black Sea. The Priazovye is on patrol duties monitoring the natural gas pipelines there.
The ministry said the attack, by drone boats, had been repelled and its vessel was not damaged.
The civilians killed and wounded in the shelling of the rescue boat were caught in the fallout from Tuesday’s destruction of the Russian-controlled Kakhovka dam along the front line in the southern Kherson region.
Thousands were forced to flee, amid fears of humanitarian and environmental disasters.
Any terrorist counts on only a few forms of results for himself: the suffering of people, the intimidation of people, and the ruins that terror leaves behind. This is exactly how Russia acts in this case.
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 11, 2023
We will do everything to guarantee people a basis for life even after this… pic.twitter.com/iIKLQRGlSm
In his evening address on Sunday, Zelenskyy, who indicated that “dozens of towns and villages remain flooded,” condemned the Russian action.
“The occupiers set up this disaster by blowing up the dam, abandoned people in flooded towns and villages, and after that they shell the evacuating boats…”
While Ukraine accuses Russia of blowing up the dam on the Dnipro River, Moscow says Kyiv fired on the structure.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin and representatives of the International Criminal Court visited the region of Kherson, his office said.
“This is the worst environmental catastrophe since Chernobyl so we are investigating not only a war crime but also an ecocide,” Kostin was quoted as stating.
He noted several facilities including oil storage terminals had been flooded.
A total of 450 tonnes of turbine oil have spilled into the waters of the Dnipro and the Black Sea, he added.
Ukrainian officials say seven people died and 35 people, including seven children, are still missing following the devastating flood from the dam destruction.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said 77 towns and villages had been flooded in Kherson, where five people died, and Mykolaiv, where two died, while 162,000 people were without water supplies.
Zelenskyy said 4,000 people had been evacuated in the two regions.
In Kherson city, the largest population centre near the dam, the water began to subside and locals began to return to assess the damage, an AFP correspondent at the scene said as rescuers continued evacuation efforts.
An employee at Kherson’s meteorological agency, Lora Musiyan, said the level of water dropped by 1.7 meters (5.5 feet) from its peak measurements recorded last week.
Oleksiy Gesin, cleared the debris from his grocery store during his first visit there in six days. He faced “significant” losses from having to throw away food, he said.
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