KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's military on Sunday reported recapturing a village in the southeast of the country amid Russian claims of repelling multiple attacks in the area, the latest indication that a highly anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive might be underway even as officials in Kyiv stop short of publicly acknowledging it.
The 68th Separate Hunting Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces posted a video on Facebook showing soldiers installing a Ukrainian flag on a damaged building in what the post said was the village of Blahodatne in the partially occupied eastern Donetsk region. In a separate social media post, Ukraine's Ground Forces confirmed that the brigade had retaken Blahodatne.
Myroslav Semeniuk, spokesman for the brigade, told The Associated Press that an assault team captured six Russian troops after entering several buildings where some 60 soldiers were holed up. “The enemy keeps shelling us but this won’t stop us,” Semeniuk said. “The next village we plan to reclaim is Urozhayne. After that, (we’ll proceed) further south.”
While the recapture of Blahodatne pointed to a small Ukrainian advance, Western and Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly cautioned that efforts to expel Russian troops more broadly are expected take time. Russia has made much of how its troops have held their ground elsewhere.
The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday continued to insist that it was repelling Ukrainian attacks in the area. It said in a statement that Ukrainian attempts at offensive operations on the southern Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia axes of the frontline over the past 24 hours have been “unsuccessful.”
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in the Zaporizhzhia region, insisted that Blahodatne, along with two other villages in Zaporizhzhia, are in a “gray area” in terms of who controls them. According to Rogov, the Ukrainian forces have briefly seized another village in the neighboring Donetsk region, but were swiftly routed by the Russian troops.
"The situation is developing. Nothing extraordinary is happening,” Rogov said in a Telegram post.
The Russian military have also accused Ukrainian forces of attacking — albeit unsuccessfully — one of its ships in the Black Sea.
According to a statement by Russia's Defense Ministry, the attempted attack took place on Sunday when six unmanned speedboats targeted Russia’s Priazovye reconnaissance vessel that was “monitoring the situation and ensuring security along the routes of the TurkStream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the southeastern part of the Black Sea.”
All the speedboats were destroyed by the Russian military, and the ship didn’t sustain any damage, the ministry said. The claim could not be independently verified, and Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.
Moscow made a similar allegation last month and reported that Ukrainian unmanned speedboats targeted another reconnaissance ship in the Black Sea, the Ivan Khurs. Several days later, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry published video that appeared to show a marine drone heading for the Ivan Khurs, but didn’t show the drone hitting the ship.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that “counteroffensive and defensive actions” were underway against Russian forces. He refused to disclose any details but asked to pass it on to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his top commanders were in a “positive” mindset as their troops engaged in intense fighting along the front line.
Zelenskyy made the remarks at a Kyiv news conference alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in response to a question about Putin’s comment a day earlier that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had started — and Ukrainian forces were taking “significant losses.”
Top Ukrainian authorities have stopped short of announcing a full-blown counteroffensive was underway, though some Western analysts said fiercer fighting and reported use of reserve troops suggested it was.
