Ukraine says it has recaptured ground in Bakhmut, a rare development after months of grinding Russian gains in the eastern city.
Kiev said his forces had advanced 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) in a week. Russia said its troops had regrouped in one area.
The claims signal a change of pace in Bakhmut – but more broadly, there is no clear evidence of a Ukrainian counterattack.
However, two explosions were reported in Russian-held Luhansk on Friday.
Images posted on social media, confirmed by JEE News, showed a large plume of black smoke rising from the city, which is about 90 kilometers (55.9 miles) behind the front line in eastern Ukraine.
The cause has not been confirmed but the blasts came a day after Britain said it had supplied long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine.
Luhansk is beyond the range of Hummarus rockets Ukraine has previously relied on for deep strikes on Russian targets.
But Russian-appointed officials in the region said they believed Ukrainian-made missiles were responsible, hitting the administrative buildings of the two defunct institutions.
Earlier, the Ministry of Defense of Russia said that the Russian troops in the Bakhmut area have changed their position due to strategic reasons.
It said that units of the southern group of Russian forces had taken up a better defensive position in the Malulinyukka region, taking into account the “favorable conditions of the Barkhyukka reservoir”.
However, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner Mercenary Group, said what the Defense Ministry was talking about was “unfortunately called ‘defection’ and not ‘regrouping'”.
As the fierce, bloody war has begun, Bakhmut has become symbolically important – although many experts question its strategy.
In a post on Telegram, Deputy Defense Minister Hina Maliar claimed that Russia suffered significant troop losses as Ukraine gained 2 kilometers without any positions.
Meanwhile, Russian military bloggers reported Ukrainian advances or troop movements in several areas.
The Institute for the Study of War also said that Ukrainian forces had gained about 2 kilometers in Bakhmut.
JEE News has confirmed video of soldiers with Ukrainian identification markings standing in front of a gate and a tank in the distance, also with Ukrainian markings.
The video, which was published on May 11, is located in the area around the Bachmut Industrial College, until recently occupied by Wagner’s troops.
Not far from Bakhmut, the exiled mayor of Melitopol reported a large explosion Friday morning in the center of the southeastern city, which has been held by Russia since the start of the war.
It was not known what caused the explosion, but Ukraine’s armed forces carried out 14 attacks on Russian forces and military equipment on Thursday.
Along with the airstrikes, Ukraine said it destroyed nine Russian drones and carried out successful strikes on dozens of military targets – including artillery units, ammunition depots and air defense equipment.
After months of deadlock, Ukraine’s retaliation – aided by new Western weapons – has been openly discussed. But Ukraine’s president said on Thursday it was too early to launch an attack.
“With [what we already have] we can move forward and, I think, succeed,” President Vladimir Zelensky said in an interview.
“But we’re going to lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We just need some more time.”
Despite President Zelensky’s words, pro-Kremlin Russian war correspondent Sasha Coates claimed retaliation had begun.
He cited “reliable” sources as saying that Ukrainian tanks were on the Kharkiv ring road leading to the border with Russia. His claims could not be independently verified.
“The columns have low loaders with Western [tank] models among others,” Coates added.
“In other words,” he said, “Kiev [Kiev] has decided to make the situation worse in parallel with the launch of offensive operations on the northern front as well as on the edge of Artyomovsk [the Russian name for Bekhmut].”
Another Russian war correspondent, Alexander Simonov, wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had broken through near the village of Bohdanivka near Bakhmut and captured “several square kilometers” of land.
Oleksandr Mosivenko, a Ukrainian military analyst, said Kiev acknowledged that the expected counter-offensive would not necessarily defeat Russia “in all occupied territories”.
He told JEE News that there is every possibility that the war will continue into next year. “It all depends on how the fighting develops. We cannot guarantee how the retaliation will develop,” he said.
An unnamed senior US military official told JEE News that Ukrainian forces are preparing a major counterattack targeting targets such as weapons depots, command centers and armor and artillery systems.
Ukraine’s spring 2022 advance into the southern and northeastern parts of the country was also preceded by airstrikes to “shape” the battlefield.
