(Reuters) – Military bloggers on Friday reported that Russian forces were moving closer to capturing a major town on the eastern front in the war in Ukraine as part of their drive westward to capture all of the Donbas region.
Bloggers on both sides reported that Russian forces had entered the village of Sontsivka and were advancing from the northwest on the city of Kurakhove.
Ukrainian authorities made no acknowledgement that the village had fallen into Russian hands, while noting that fighting on the eastern front was heaviest around Kurakhove and Pokrovsk, a major logistics centre to the northwest.
“The Kurakhove direction and the Pokrovsk direction are the most challenging right now,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “The military command and brigade command are working on strengthening positions.”
Ukraine’s General Staff made no mention of the village, saying that Ukrainian forces had repelled 18 of 32 Russian attacks near Kurakhove and 19 assaults near Pokrovsk.
The popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState showed Sontsivka to be in a grey area, with control uncertain.
A Ukrainian officer, identifying himself as Alex, said Russian troops had penetrated Ukrainian defences and secured a foothold in the village. A Russian blogger, identifying himself as Blue Z Beard, issued a similar report, saying the advance would eventually lead to the encirclement of Kurakhove.
After initially failing to advance on the capital Kyiv after their February 2022 invasion, Russian forces have focused on securing control of Donbas, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Russia now controls about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory. Its military has steadily reported the capture of a string of villages in recent weeks while pushing towards Pokrovsk.
In September, Moscow’s forces advanced at their fastest rate since March 2022, according to open source data, despite Ukraine seizing a part of Russia’s southern Kursk region.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Oleksandr Kozhukhar; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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