Ukraine says it has liberated three villages in the country’s southeast in the first of its many expected counter-offensives.
Footage on social media shows Ukrainian soldiers celebrating in the neighboring settlements of Bilhodatne and Neskuchne in the Donetsk region.
Kyiv’s deputy defense minister said nearby Makaryuka had also been taken.
On Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed that retaliation had begun.
The three settlements would be the first to be liberated since his comments, but not the first that Ukraine has recaptured since Monday, when its forces began advancing into the south of the country.
Moscow has yet to confirm that any villages have fallen, instead blaming Ukraine’s offensive in the region.
Elsewhere, Ukraine says Russia has blown up another dam in the Zaporizhzhia region, following Monday’s collapse of the massive Kakhuvka dam, which led to widespread flooding and mass evacuations. On Sunday, President Zelenskiy said that 4,000 people had now been evacuated.
Ukraine says the dam was blown up by Russian forces, who have controlled it since February 2022.
Ukrainian military spokesman Valery Shirshin said Moscow’s forces chose to blow up a second dam near the village of Novodaryuka that “flooded both banks of the Mokriyali River”.
Mr Shirshin said Russia was deliberately blowing up dams in the area to stop Ukraine’s advance into occupied territories.
Russia has denied that it blew up the Kakhivka dam, blaming Ukraine instead.
‘Under the Ukrainian flag again’
In footage shared by pro-Ukraine accounts on social media, soldiers can be seen raising a Ukrainian flag outside a burned building in Bilhodtne.
And the state border guard released videos showing Kyiv forces declaring that “Niskochan in the Donetsk region is once again under the Ukrainian flag”, before chanting “Glory of Ukraine”. should be applied.
Meanwhile, Deputy Defense Minister Hina Miliar claimed in a Telegram video that Ukrainian forces have also captured the village of Makaryuka.
An army spokesman said these successes were the first local victories of the retaliatory operation.
While the capture of three villages marks the biggest advance in recent times, the settlements are relatively small. The pre-war population of Balhodtne consisted of only 1,000 residents.
The village, which has been the center of heavy fighting in recent days, sits on the road to the city of Mariupol, and some analysts believe Ukraine could try to retake the port city in the coming months.
Others have speculated that Kyiv wants to break the land bridge between occupied Crimea and Donetsk, isolating Russian troops on the peninsula.
Further east, Ukrainian troops are said to have advanced near the ruined city of Bakhmut, the scene of a long and bloody battle between Ukrainian forces and Russian troops.
On Monday, Ukraine’s General Staff said there had been 25 clashes in the previous day.
Senior officials in Kyiv have declined to comment on the details of the advance.
Ukraine’s secretive chief of intelligence, Kyrillo Budanov, released a video on Sunday reiterating the “love of silence plan,” hinting at the secrecy behind the crackdown.
The extent of Ukraine’s operations remains unclear, but the US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Saturday that Kyiv’s forces were attacking at least four front-line areas.
Ukraine has suffered some setbacks while investigating Russian strongholds. A group of Ukrainian soldiers told JEE news agency that they lost several new US-made Bradley fighting vehicles in an attack in the southeast of Zaporizhia province on Thursday.
Six of the nine vehicles were destroyed, he said, adding that he feared someone had leaked information about his plans.
Analysts have highlighted the difficulties Ukraine faces in trying to break through lines that Russia has been reinforcing for months.
But in other areas where Kyiv troops are said to have breached front lines in mechanized attacks over the weekend, German Leopard-2 tanks are said to be deployed.
Meanwhile, rail traffic was suspended in Russia’s Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, after a freight train derailed on Saturday night. Belgorod’s border areas have been hit by drones, shelling and cross-border attacks in recent weeks.
Further north, the governor of the Kaluga region, Vladislav Shapsha, said two drones had crashed – one near the village of Strelukka and the other in the forest.
