MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Russian Defence Ministry said on Tuesday its forces had taken control of the village of Rozlyv in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the focal point of their steady westward advance through the area.
Ukraine’s military said Russian forces had launched five attacks on Rozlyv and the nearby village of Kostiantynopil, but made no acknowledgement that Rozlyv was now in Russian hands.
A late evening report by the Ukrainian General Staff said three battles were still going on in the area.
Reuters could not independently verify battlefield accounts from either side.
DeepState, a Ukrainian blog that tracks the 1,000-km (600-mile) front line using open sources, had reported Russian advances over the past 24 hours near Rozlyv.
It also reported heavy fighting further east near Toretsk, another heavily contested town.
Rozlyv lies south of Pokrovsk, a town targeted by Russian forces for many weeks and site of Ukraine’s only colliery producing coking coal. The mine closed down as Russian troops approached the site.
After failing in their initial advance on the capital Kyiv in the first weeks after their February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces have concentrated their efforts on seizing control of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Both regions, partly controlled by Russian troops, were annexed by Russia in 2022, an action denounced by Ukraine and its Western partners.
In Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, further south, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said Russian shelling killed one person in a frontline settlement that he did not identify. Officials in adjacent Dnipropetrovsk region said Russian shelling had injured three in the town of Nikopol, a frequent Russian target.
In the Russian city of Taganrog, east of the Ukrainian border, the acting governor of Rostov region, Yuri Slyusar, said Ukrainian drones had damaged two high-rise buildings. He said 85 residents had been evacuated from one of the buildings.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou and Ron Popeski; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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