The Russian occupation authorities said on Friday they noted a “sharp increase in the intensity” of the fighting in the Zaporizhia region in southern Ukraine, where clashes are taking place “along the entire front line”.
“In the direction of Zaporizhia, the intensity of hostilities has increased sharply,” a leader of the Moscow-installed Zaporizhia regional occupation authority, Vladimir Rogov, said on Telegram.
“If we look at the whole front line, then fighting is going on everywhere right now,” he told Russian news agency Ria Novosti.
“This had never happened before,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Ukrainian army, Natalia Goumeniuk, for her part, spoke of a “fairly difficult” but “stabilizing” situation on the front in the south.
“We observe that they (the Russians) are carrying out maneuvers there, constantly looking for places where they will be relatively safe, because our strikes are precise,” she said on television.
According to her, the Russian troops “are in the process of regrouping their units and their armaments, in particular in the region of Zaporijjia”.
The line of contact between the Ukrainian and Russian armies in the Zaporizhia region has been stabilized for several months and no major combat has taken place there, unlike the Donetsk and Kherson regions.
Earlier Friday, the Russian army claimed to have conquered the small village of Lobkové, located near the Dnieper River, more than 60 kilometers southeast of Zaporizhia, the capital of the eponymous region.
Mr. Rogov indicated, for his part, that “it is not yet an assault on Orikhiv (the main town nearby, editor’s note), but active fighting is underway in its near suburbs”.
“The heights (around) were taken, which determines the control of fire on Orikhiv and other localities,” he said.
According to a morning bulletin from the Ukrainian army, “more than 20 localities were affected” in the Zaporijjia region on Thursday “by tank, mortar and artillery fire” Russian.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, the Russian army announced on Friday that it had taken control of Klichchiivka, a small town south of Bakhmout, a city that has become the epicenter of the fighting.
Klichchiivka, which had a population of around 500 before the war, lies less than 10 kilometers southwest of Bakhmout, the target of the Russian offensive in the region for several months.
Its capture, days after Moscow said it took control of Soledar northeast of Bakhmout – which kyiv denies – would seem to indicate that Russia is now trying to encircle the big city, after having attempted an unsuccessful frontal assault. from the east.
Since last summer, the Russian army, supported at the same time by mercenaries from the paramilitary group Wagner, has been trying to seize Bakhmout, without however succeeding. The city is now largely destroyed and almost emptied of its civilian population.
The battle for Bakhmout, particularly bloody according to Ukrainians and Russians, has already caused many deaths on both sides, without them officially giving the count of the victims.