War in Ukraine, day 473 | Kyiv claims the takeover of two villages

(Kyiv) Ukraine announced on Sunday the recapture of the villages of Blagodatné and Neskuchne, the first two territorial gains of its offensive.

Moscow has reported heavy fighting on Ukraine’s southern front for nearly a week, but Kyiv has largely kept quiet about its strategy, refusing to confirm whether it was the big offensive its military has been planning for months. , bolstered by crucial Western arms supplies.

“The glorious soldiers of the 68^e brigade […] liberated the locality of Blagodatné,” the ground forces of the Ukrainian army said on Facebook, posting a video showing soldiers with a Ukrainian flag in a destroyed building.

This village, which had less than 1,000 inhabitants before the war, is located on the border of the regions of Donetsk and Zaporijjia, in the south-east of Ukraine.

According to the spokesman of the units responsible for the defense of the “Front Tavria” which took part in the operation, Valery Сherchene, the Ukrainians captured two Russian soldiers and pro-Russian separatist fighters.

“The Ukrainian flag was hung on Blagodatné,” he added on television.

It was the first territorial gain announced for months by Kyiv apart from the few hundred meters recently gained on the outskirts of Bakhmout, a devastated city in eastern Ukraine, which Moscow claimed to have taken in May.

“Neskuchne, in the Donetsk region is again under the Ukrainian flag,” assured the state border guard service.

Remaining evasive, President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted on Saturday that his army was carrying out “counter-offensive and defensive actions” on the front while refusing to talk about it in detail.

“You have to trust our soldiers and I trust them,” added Mr. Zelensky.

“Considerable damage”

In southern Ukraine, evacuations continued after floods caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, a disaster for which both sides blame each other.

According to the new report reported by the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior, six people died in these floods and 35 are missing, including seven children, in the territories which are under the control of Kyiv.

Three people were killed and 10 others injured on Sunday in a strike that hit a boat carrying evacuees from flooded areas in southern Ukraine, the local governor said.

“Thirteen people were victims of the bombardment of a boat evacuating people from the left bank (of the Dnieper). Three civilians were killed, 10 others were injured, including two law enforcement officers,” Kherson region governor Oleksandr Prokudin told Telegram.

In the territories occupied by the Russians, officials installed by Moscow reported this week eight dead and 13 missing in connection with this same tragedy.

In Kherson, the regional capital, the waters have started to recede in some neighborhoods, despite the rain, while evacuations continue in others, AFP journalists have noted.

The first residents returned home to see the damage, such as Oleksiï Guessine, 60, who saw his grocery store in the center of the city for the first time in six days.

Wearing rubber boots and in the rain, he shovels out the waste and earth that have been brought in by the water.

“The damage is considerable. In the store, I had water up to my chest, everything below was damaged,” he says.

According to an employee of the Kherson meteorological center, Laura Moussian, the water level has decreased locally by 1.7 meters.

“There could be heavy rain again, which could significantly slow the pace of the decline,” she said.

There is also concern about possible water contamination, which has engulfed at least three cemeteries, oil storage terminals and landfills, according to Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriï Kostine.

Nearly 450 tons of turbine oil also spilled into the waters of the Dnieper and then the Black Sea, he added.

Attack in the Black Sea

Russian President Vladimir Putin had meanwhile assured the day before that the great Ukrainian counter-offensive expected for months had “begun”, but that the Kyiv forces had “failed to achieve their objectives” after several days of heavy fighting.

If he assured that the Ukrainian troops suffered heavy losses, he affirmed that Kyiv retained its “offensive potential”.

The Russian Defense Ministry released video on Saturday showing a column of destroyed Western-made tanks and armored vehicles, some still smoking carcasses, in the southern Donetsk region.

He also assured that Ukraine unsuccessfully attacked one of its warships overnight from Saturday to Sunday while patrolling the Black Sea, near two gas pipelines used to transport Russian hydrocarbons to Turkey.

According to him, all the Ukrainian remote control boats were destroyed and the Russian ship, the Priazovie, was not damaged.