Ukraine has recaptured the village of Piatykhatky in the southern Zapororizhzhia region, reports suggest. The move would be its first gain in the area since it launched its counteroffensive earlier this month. A Russian-installed official said Ukrainian forces had taken the settlement and were entrenching themselves there while coming under fire from Russian artillery, Reuters reports. If confirmed it would be Ukraine’s first village gain for nearly a week, and marks an apparent escalation of the offensive on the most direct route to Crimea.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed on Sunday that its forces had repelled a series of Ukrainian attacks across three sections of the front line, where it said Ukraine was pressing most actively in the Zaporizhzhia region, Reuters reports. The battlefield reports could not be independently verified.
The European Union is speeding up arms deliveries to Ukraine to support the country’s counter offensive against Russian forces, EU industry chief Thierry Breton has told the French daily Le Parisien. He said the EU would be stepping up its efforts, pledging that 1 million high-caliber weapons must be provided within the next year.
The UK ministry of defence says heavy fighting is continuing to be focused in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, western Donetsk Oblast, and around Bakhmut. It says both sides are suffering high casualties, with Russian losses likely the highest since the peak of the battle for Bakhmut in March.
The death toll from flooding caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam has risen to 16 in Ukraine and 29 in territories controlled by Russia, according to briefings by Kyiv and Moscow. Flood water poured across a huge area of southern-Ukraine and Russian-occupied areas when the the dam was breached on 6 June.
Ukrainian forces have destroyed an ammunition depot near the Russian-occupied port city of Henichesk in the southern region of Kherson, a spokesperson for the Odesa military administration said on Sunday.
Vladimir Putin on Saturday gave African leaders pushing for negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow a list of reasons why he believed many of their peace proposals were misguided, pouring cold water on a plan already largely dismissed by Kyiv. The African leaders were seeking agreement on a series of “confidence building measures”, telling the Russian president it was time to negotiate an end to fighting, which they said was harming the entire world.
South Africa’s president told Putin that the fighting had to stop. “This war must be settled … through negotiations and through diplomatic means,” said Cyril Ramaphosa after talks in the suburbs of St Petersburg.
