Ukraine takes Zaporizhia village, amid fierce front line battles

Ukrainian troops have recaptured Piatykhatky, a village in the west of the Zaporizhia region, Ukraine’s second gain on that front since it launched its counteroffensive earlier this month.

A Russian-installed official in the partly-occupied Zaporizhia region, Vladimir Rogov, said Ukraine had taken “operational control” of the settlement and that Russian troops were trying to counterattack with shelling.

“The enemy’s ‘wave-like’ offensives yielded results, despite enormous losses,” Rogov said on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukraine said on June 12 it had taken control of Lobkove, a village next to Piatykhatky.

Zaporizhia is the location of some of the most intense fighting since the counteroffensive began, according to a United Kingdom’s intelligence assessment on Sunday. Battles were also raging around the city of Bakhmut and in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the UK said.

Ukraine is on the offensive in these areas and “made small advances”, it said, adding that Russian forces are conducting “relatively effective defensive operations” in Ukraine’s south.

Serhiy Bratchuk, a government spokesperson for Ukraine’s southwestern Odesa region, said Ukrainian forces destroyed a “very significant” ammunition depot near the Russian-occupied port city of Henichesk in nearby Kherson province.

“Our armed forces dealt a good blow in the morning,” Bratchuk said in a video message posted to his Telegram channel.

Western analysts and military officials have cautioned that Ukraine’s counteroffensive to dislodge Russian forces from occupied areas along the 1,000km (620-mile) front line could last a long time.

Russia’s defence ministry made no mention of Piatykhatky in its daily update, in which it said its forces had repelled Ukrainian attacks in three sections of the front line. A separate statement from Russia’s Vostok group of forces said Ukraine had failed to take the settlement.

The Ukrainian military said on Sunday that over the previous 24 hours, Russia carried out 43 air strikes, four missile attacks and 51 rocket launches.

According to its statement, Russia continues to concentrate its efforts on offensive operations in Ukraine’s industrial east, focusing attacks around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Marinka and Lyman in the Donetsk region, with 26 combat clashes taking place.