The Ukrainian army on Sunday announced the capture of the village of Blagodatné in south-eastern Ukraine, the first territorial gain since the start of its offensive against Russian forces in this part of the front.
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“The glorious soldiers of the 68th Brigade […] “We liberated the place Blagodatné,” Ukrainian ground forces said on Facebook, accompanied by a video showing soldiers with a Ukrainian flag in a destroyed building.
According to the spokesman for the units responsible for the defense of the “Front Tavria” involved in the operation, Valery Cherchène, the Ukrainians captured two Russian soldiers and pro-Russian separatist fighters.
“The Ukrainian flag hung over Blagodatné,” he added of this village, which had fewer than 1,000 inhabitants before the war.
This location is on the border of Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions in south-eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has been reporting heavy Ukrainian attacks for almost a week.
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi reported on “counter-offensive actions” by his army at the front, without specifying whether this was a major attack that the staff in Kiev had been preparing for months.
His Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin reassured him on Friday that this full-scale Ukrainian counter-offensive had “begun” but that Kiev forces had failed to achieve their goals after several days of fighting.