Russian forces take control of two settlements in eastern Ukraine, TASS says

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MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian forces have taken control of two frontline settlements in eastern Donetsk region, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Friday.

A ministry report said Russian forces had captured the village of Zelene Pole located between Pokrovsk, the focal point of Russian attacks in the region, and Velyuka Novosilka, a settlement that Russia’s military said it captured late last month.

Also captured, according to the Russian report, was the village of Dachne, west of the town of Kurakhove, which Russia’s military said it also captured last month. The town had been subjected to weeks of heavy fighting.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s military, in a late evening report, said both villages were among 11 settlements that had come under Russian attack in the Pokrovsk sector. But it made no mention of them coming under Russian control.

Reuters could not independently confirm battlefield reports from either side.

Ukraine’s DeepState military blog, which tracks frontline positions based on open source reports, said this week that Russian forces had made advances near Zelene Pole and Dachne.

Russian forces failed in their initial bid to advance on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, after the February 2022 invasion and have since concentrated on capturing Donbas, made up of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

They have been making steady progress across Donetsk region for months, capturing a long string of villages.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday praised the “good success” of a regiment based near Pokrovsk, without identifying where the operation had taken place.

At least one foreign blogger has noted Ukrainian counterattacks in the area.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Gleb Stolyarov; Editing by Andrew Osborn, Ron Popeski and Leslie Adler)