Kyiv, Ukraine
Reuters
Ukraine reported incremental advances in its counter-offensive against Russian forces on Wednesday in what it described as “extremely fierce” fighting.
In a post on the Telegram messaging app, Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said the Ukrainian actions had “partial” success.
A Ukrainian self-propelled howitzer Caesar is seen, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, near the front line in the newly liberated village Storozheve in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on 14trh June , 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Oleksandr Ratushniak
In the past day, Ukrainian troops had advanced 200-500 metres in various areas near the largely devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, and 300-350 metres in the direction of the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, she said.
RUSSIAN SOLDIERS’ CORPSES LINE ROAD INTO LIBERATED UKRAINIAN VILLAGE
The road into the newly liberated Ukrainian village of Storozheve is lined with the corpses of Russian soldiers and burnt-out armoured vehicles.
The grisly scenes bear witness to the ferocity of fighting as Ukrainian troops recaptured Storozheve and several other villages in the past few days as part of a counter-offensive in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Some of the dead Russian soldiers lay on the dusty ground beside the husks of their vehicles when Reuters journalists reached the village on Wednesday. Others were crumpled in the grass and fields nearby where they died.
Inside the village, the small one-storey houses that line the road have been badly damaged by shelling, their roofs completely gone or with gaping holes.
An abandoned stroller lay overturned at the side of the road. The village was silent, its residents gone or staying out of sight.
“Three days ago we liberated the village of Storozheve. You can see for yourselves how it was achieved. You can see the destroyed hardware. Glory to Ukraine,” a Ukrainian soldier who gave his name only as Artem told Reuters in Storozheve.
A photograph posted online on Monday showed Ukrainian soldiers holding up the yellow and blue Ukrainian flag in front of a damaged home in Storozheve.
The village had been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, one month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The soldiers said about 50 Russian soldiers were killed in a “mopping-up operation” and four were taken prisoner. Reuters was unable to verify the number of Russian casualties, although corpses were still strewn across the road and nearby fields.
Storozheve is one of a cluster of settlements near the Mokry Yali river that Ukraine says its troops have captured since their counteroffensive began.
Reuters also reached the nearby village of Neskuchne on Tuesday, providing the first independent confirmation of the Ukrainian advances since Kyiv began the counter-offensive.
– VITALII HNYIDYI, Storozheve. Ukraine/Reuters
“Our troops are moving in the face of extremely fierce fighting and air and artillery superiority of the enemy,” Maliar said.
In later comments, Maliar said Ukraine’s losses were “disproportionately” lower than those of the Russian side.
“In general, during the entire war, we had many times fewer losses,” she wrote on Telegram.
She told Ukrainian television that over the past week the number of enemy dead in the eastern “Khortytsia” section of the front was 8.73 times greater than Ukrainian losses. The figure for the southern “Tavria” section stood at 5.3.
Russian President Vladimir Putin estimated on Tuesday that Ukraine’s human losses were 10 times higher than Russia’s since the start of Kyiv’s counter-offensive.
“As of now, we are both on the offensive and defensive, just in different directions…there is a very serious standoff,” Maliar said.
Russian troops, she said, had not advanced in a little more than a week.
Ukraine said on Monday it had retaken seven settlements so far and its troops have advanced up to 6.5 kilometres and seized 90 square km (35 square miles) of ground.
Maliar had reported continuing fighting earlier on Wednesday close to the village of Makarivka in the area of the southern port city of Berdyansk and said battles were raging in the areas of Novodanylivka and Novopokrovsk near Mariupol.
Reuters could not verify the battlefield situation. Russia has not acknowledged any Ukrainian gains.
Earlier, overnight Russian missile attacks killed three people in the Black Sea city of Odesa and three in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday.
The three killed in Odesa were in a retail chain warehouse that was set ablaze during an attack that damaged a business centre, an educational institution, a residential complex, food establishments and shops, Ukraine’s military said.
Video and photographs posted online by a local official showed multi-storey buildings with parts of their walls missing and windows blown out, and firefighters battling flames in what appeared be a warehouse.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, Governor of the Donetsk region, said two people had been killed in the city of Kramatorsk and one in the industrial city of Kostiantynivka.
“The missiles…hit private houses in the cities and caused significant damage: in Kramatorsk, at least 5 private houses were destroyed and about two dozen damaged, in Kostiantynivka, two were destroyed and 55 damaged,” he said.
Emergency services personnel work to control a fire at a business centre and the warehouse of a retail chain, caused by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine in this image released on 14th June, 2023. PICTURE: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via Reuters
Ukraine’s air force said it had destroyed three Russian missiles and nine drones during the overnight strikes, the latest launched by Russia since its full-scale invasion in February, 2022.
In the northeastern region of Sumy, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said four forest workers and two other civilians had been killed when their car came under fire on Tuesday in a forest close to the border with Russia.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Russia. Both Russia and Ukraine deny targeting civilians in their military operations.
