[1/2]Drone footage shows a burning tank after being hit by aerial munitions during Russia’s attack on Ukraine, northwest of Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, in this still image from video released July 15, 2023 by the Ukrainian army became. Aerial reconnaissance of the 420th Battalion of the 57…. Read more
KIEV, July 18 (Portal) – Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday presented widely differing accounts of fighting in northeastern Ukraine. Moscow reported advances by its troops, and Kiev said it had taken the initiative in the region.
Both sides reported that fighting had not abated.
Ukraine reported some progress in a counter-offensive launched in the east earlier last month and in capturing villages in the south, while Moscow said it had stemmed any advances by Kiev forces.
The top US general, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he believed Ukraine’s counteroffensive was far from a failure, but the battle ahead would be long and bloody.
A spokesman for Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces had advanced as much as 2 km (1.2 miles) towards Kupyansk, a key rail junction in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
But Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine Hanna Maliar said the initiative in the region has shifted to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
“The enemy’s offensive in the Kupiansk sector is currently unsuccessful,” Maliar wrote on the news app Telegram. “Fighting continues, but we have taken the initiative.”
Maliar said Ukrainian forces had made new advances near Bakhmut, which was captured by Russian forces in May after months of fighting.
“SLOW BUT SURE PROGRESS” IN THE SOUTH
She said Ukrainian forces were making “slow but sure advances” in the south as they attempted to approach occupied ports on the Sea of Azov in a bid to sever a land bridge that Russian forces had established between the east and the Crimea peninsula, annexed in 2014 .
“The enemy’s main task is to stop us here. He is doing this with all his might,” Maliar told national television. “Our forces must first overcome these obstacles and prepare the ground so that we can advance more effectively.”
Valery Shershen, a spokesman for the Ukrainian troops on the southern front, reported particularly fierce fighting around the village of Staromayorske, southwest of Donetsk.
“We made progress on the road,” Shershen told the online portal Espreso TV. “Ukrainian forces control part of this settlement…we don’t control it entirely.”
According to reports from the Russian Defense Ministry, Moscow’s forces attacked groups of Ukrainian soldiers near Staromayorske.
General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, had previously said that Russia had concentrated its troops in the Kupiansk sector, but Ukrainian troops were holding them back.
“The situation is complicated but under control (in the East),” Syrskyi said on news app Telegram.
Ukrainian officials have increasingly pointed to an intensification of Russian military activity near Kupiansk and nearby Lyman in the northeast. Both cities were retaken by Ukraine late last year and Lyman is also a rail hub.
According to the Ukrainian military, Russia has deployed more than 100,000 troops and more than 900 tanks in the region.
Portal could not verify the situation on the battlefield.
Since Kiev launched its counteroffensive, backed by weapons from its western allies, it has recaptured more than 210 square kilometers (81 sq mi) of land, Maliar said Monday.
But Russia still has vast territories after its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and Ukrainian troops have encountered heavily defended positions and minefields.
Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka; Edited by Timothy Heritage, Bernadette Baum, Ron Popeski and Jonathan Oatis
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