Ukraine reports battlefield successes, says gains on southern front pave way to Crimea

KYIV - Ukrainian troops have secured some new “successes” in the south and east as they try to push forward their counter-offensive against Russian forces, Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said on Thursday.

Kyiv’s forces have made slow progress against Russian minefields and trenches blocking a southern push meant to reach the Sea of Azov and split Russian forces.

“There have been some successes, in particular in the direction of Novodanylivka-Novoprokopivka,” Ms Maliar said on Telegram, referring to two south-eastern villages in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Novoprokopivka lies further south of the strategic settlement of Robotyne, which Ukraine said on Monday it had liberated.

Ms Maliar also said Kyiv’s forces were pressing on with their offensive south of the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, which was captured by Russian troops in May.

Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, reported a “positive dynamic” on the Bakhmut front, but gave no details.

Heavy fighting raged on in the villages of Klishchiivka, Kurdyumivka and Andriivka, Ms Maliar said, adding that “active” fighting was also underway on the Lyman front in the east, where Russian troops had tried to advance near the villages of Novoyehorivka and Bilohorivka in the Luhansk region.

Ukraine said on Wednesday that recapturing the village of Robotyne this week was a strategic victory paving the way for its forces to push deeper into Russian positions in the south towards Crimea.

The comments by Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba came as Kyiv announced two people had been killed in the “most powerful” aerial attack on the capital in weeks, and Russia reported a drone strike on military aircraft in its north-west.

Kyiv launched a counter-offensive in June after stockpiling Western-supplied weapons and building up assault battalions.

“Having entrenched on the flanks of Robotyne, we are opening the way to Tokmak and, eventually, Melitopol and the administrative border with Crimea,” Mr Kuleba said, during an earlier visit to Paris.

The Kremlin has downplayed the offensive and Mr Yevgeny Balitsky, its official in charge of the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, which Russia claims as its own, warned that territory beyond Robotyne would be a “mass grave for Ukraine’s armed forces”.

Mr Yevgen Ananenko said he and his father ran downstairs when they heard the blasts, and that metal fragments had cut into the side of their building.

“If it had fallen straight into the house, I doubt we would have survived,” he said.

Military officials described the attack as “the most powerful” to hit the city since the spring, and the authorities said two employees of an infrastructure facility were killed by falling debris in the Shevchenkivsky district.

Prigozhin plane crash probe

The White House said, meanwhile, that Russia was in secret, active talks with North Korea to acquire a range of munitions and supplies for its offensive.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the countries’ leaders Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un exchanged letters pledging to increase bilateral cooperation following a visit to Pyongyang by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

The US, Britain, South Korea and Japan said at the United Nations that such an arms deal would violate Security Council resolutions Russia itself has endorsed.

Mr Kirby added that despite its denials, North Korea supplied infantry rockets and missiles to Russia in 2022 for use by the private Wagner paramilitary group.

Its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in Russia last week, two months after leading a short-lived mutiny against the country’s military leadership that rocked Mr Putin’s authority.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday told reporters that investigators had not ruled out any cause for the crash, including foul play.

Drone wave

Ukraine has been stepping up drone attacks inside Russia.

It launched a wave of strikes overnight, targeting an airport near the Estonian border and the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea, the Russian authorities said.

The attack on Pskov airport, roughly 700km from the border with Ukraine, marks the latest strike far from Ukraine’s borders since Kyiv vowed to “return” the conflict to Russia in July.

Russia’s state news agency Tass, citing emergency services, said four Ilyushin Il-76 heavy transport planes were damaged in the attack in Pskov, while the Emergencies Ministry said at least two aircraft had caught fire.

The Pskov region was previously targeted by drones in May.

The authorities in the Bryansk region near the Ukraine border, the southern Oryol region and the Kaluga and Ryazan regions, south-west and south-east of Moscow, all reported that drones had been destroyed or downed.

Air defences also destroyed a drone “heading for Moscow”, the city’s mayor wrote on social media, adding that there were no casualties or damage caused.

Tass reported that Moscow’s Domodedovo and Vnukovo airports had been temporarily closed.

Moscow and other Russian regions have been targeted by almost daily drone strikes since Kyiv vowed this summer to “return” the conflict to Russia.

Black Sea tensions

Tensions have also been building on the Black Sea since Moscow exited a deal allowing maritime grain exports from Ukraine, and threatened to attack cargo ships using Ukrainian ports.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Wednesday that its fighter jets had destroyed several high-speed military boats in the Black Sea around midnight Moscow time.

Early on Wednesday, Russian defences also repelled a “seaborne drone attack” near Sevastopol in occupied Crimea, Tass cited the Moscow-installed governor Mikhail Razvozhayev as saying.

Sevastopol is the base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. AFP