Moscow - Russia’s army said Friday its forces had captured three more villages in eastern Ukraine, where it is advancing even as Kyiv mounts a major cross-border assault into Russian territory. In a briefing published on its Telegram page, Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had seized settlements in Ukraine’s Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkiv regions. They were Novozhelanne, which lies between the cities of Donetsk and Pokrovsk, Synkivka in the Kharkiv region and the small village of Kostyantynivka in Donetsk, which shares its name with a larger city in the region that is under Ukrainian control. Russia has claimed to have taken control of dozens of Ukrainian towns and villages -- some no more than a few streets and handful of abandoned buildings -- in recent months, with Ukraine outgunned and outmanned across the sprawling frontline. Moscow appears to be focusing its firepower on the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk, where Kyiv says the fighting is intense and “difficult.”
“The most difficult situation remains in the Pokrovsk direction. The enemy is trying to break through the defences of our troops,” Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said Friday.
He also said Kyiv’s troops were continuing to press forward in Russia’s western Kursk region, where they claimed earlier this week to have taken control of 100 border settlements.
