Russian forces advanced today at points along the front line in Ukraine, capturing a village in the Donetsk region, taking better positions in the Kharkiv region and repelling numerous Ukrainian attacks, the Russian Defense Ministry said, Reuters reports.
Russia controls about 18 percent of Ukraine, in the east and south, and has been increasingly hit by the failure of Kiev's counteroffensive in 2023 to make any serious inroads against well-entrenched Russian troops.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in February ordered Russian troops to "push" further into Ukraine after the fall of the town of Avdiyevka, where he said Ukrainian troops were forced to flee in the chaos. Ukraine has announced that it has withdrawn from Avdiyivka.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that its troops captured the village of Semenivka, northwest of Avdiyevka. Russia said it had defeated Ukrainian forces and foreign mercenaries in a number of other villages in the area.
Russia also reported the defeat of Ukrainian troops in the Sinkivka area of Kharkiv region and a number of other points along the front line. It was also said to have hit Ukrainian drone workshops.
The General Staff of Ukraine announced that its troops had repelled enemy attacks near Semenivka and reported that its soldiers had repelled a number of other Russian attacks.
Reuters was not able to immediately verify accounts of the situation on the battlefield from either side. Both sides have restrictions on journalists covering the conflict.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 killed thousands of people and caused the biggest crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, writes Reuters.
The West and Ukraine say they will not rest until Russian forces are defeated, and portray the war as an imperialist land grab aimed at returning the country to Moscow's orbit.
But Russia is arming itself faster than the West, has a larger army than before the invasion and has a population several times larger than Ukraine, which is trying to attract more people to its army, writes Reuters.
Russia says it will achieve all of its goals in what it calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine, parts of which Moscow now says it considers Russian territory.
Russia sees the war as a battle with the West, which Putin says ignored Moscow's attempt at friendship after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and sought to seize control of Ukraine while expanding the NATO military alliance eastward.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Sunday that it had captured Novobakhmutivka, another village near Ocheretina that has become the focus of fighting in recent days.
"Russian forces are likely to continue to make tactical gains in the direction of Avdiyevka in the coming weeks," said the Institute for the Study of War, a research organization that says it is dedicated to helping achieve US strategic goals.
"The next line of defensible settlements in that area is at some distance from the Ukrainian defense line that Russian forces have been attacking since the capture of Avdiyivka in mid-February 2024," the statement said.
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