(Moscow) Russia claimed Thursday the capture of two villages in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, where it has been making progress in recent months against struggling Ukrainian troops, Russian state agencies reported.
Posted at 6:58 a.m.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its troops had “liberated” Zelenivka, a small town west of the industrial town of Kurakhové, which appears close to falling.
Russian soldiers had already captured villages to the north, east and south of Kurakhové, almost encircling it.
The Russians have accelerated their advance in the Donetsk region, a target for months. It is part of Donbass, a historic Ukrainian mining basin that Russian President Vladimir Putin sees as “a priority”.
The Russian ministry also claimed the capture of the village of Noviï Komar, according to the Ria Novosti agency.
This locality had only a few hundred inhabitants before the conflict, but it is located about twenty kilometers from the borders of the Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
Ukraine suspects Russia of preparing an offensive in the southern region of Zaporizhia. Moscow’s troops already occupy part of it but the southern front has remained relatively stable since the start of the year, compared to the eastern front.
PHOTO GLEB GARANICH, REUTERS
Searchlights to search for drones in the skies of Kyiv
A large-scale Russian attack would pose a challenge to the Ukrainian army, whose forces are already strained in the eastern regions.
Russian troops seized more Ukrainian territory in November than in any other month since March 2022, according to an AFP analysis based on data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), based in the United States.
Ukrainian strikes cause fire at Russian refinery
A nighttime attack by Ukrainian drones and missiles caused a fire at an oil refinery in southern Russia, Russian and Ukrainian authorities said Thursday.
Russian oil infrastructure is a prime target for Ukraine, which attacks it in response to the large-scale Russian offensive launched against its own territory almost three years ago.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Thursday that it had “hit” the Novochakhtinsk oil refinery, located near its borders in the southern Russian region of Rostov.
This caused “a fire,” he added.
The site “is used to meet the needs of the Russian army,” according to Ukrainian forces.
The governor of the Rostov region, Yuri Slioussar, had earlier said that a fire had broken out in the refinery after a “massive attack” by Ukraine using around thirty drones and three missiles.
The fire lasted for six hours, he said. Images, shared on social networks but whose authenticity AFP was unable to verify, show a blaze and plumes of gray smoke.
The refinery is located about ten kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
A source within Ukraine’s security services (SBU) told AFP the attack had caused “significant damage”.
The drones sent en masse first “overloaded the Russian anti-aircraft defenses which protected the factory”, which created an “opportunity” for the missiles sent subsequently, explained this source.
Russia’s border regions are frequently targeted by Ukrainian forces. Last week, two separate attacks targeted Rostov and the western Bryansk region, causing an oil terminal to burn and an “industrial enterprise” to be damaged.
For its part, Russia has seriously damaged Ukraine’s electricity network by repeatedly bombing it, causing regular power outages.
