Russian forces continue advance on encircled city in Donbass – MOD
Russian forces have made gains around the Ukrainian-held stronghold of Mirnograd (Dimitrov) after liberating a village on the outskirts of the city, the Defense Ministry in Moscow announced on Wednesday.
The village of Sukhoi Yar lies around 1km to the south of the city in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), where Ukrainian forces were encircled late last month. Russian troops have also made new advances inside the city itself, making gains in its east, the ministry said in its daily briefing.
More than 250 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed and 22 pieces of military hardware destroyed in the area over the past 24 hours, it added.
The defense ministry also provided an update on another frontline hotspot – the city of Kupyansk in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region. The country’s forces have continued the search-and-destroy operation in the city, targeting the encircled remnants of its garrison as well as thwarting Kiev’s attempts to evacuate them, it said.
The ministry published a video of the commander of an assault unit with the 121st Regiment of the 68th Guards Motorized Rifle Division, call sign Lavrik, who said his men continued to sweep through the western part of the city. Over the past day, the unit secured three more streets in the area, as well as shelled Ukrainian positions to the south of Kupyansk.
“Fifteen [Ukrainian] militants holding their positions were eliminated in combat. The spirits are high. We will accomplish the assigned task,” Lavrik stated.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that over 10,000 Ukrainian servicemen had been surrounded in Kupyansk, as well as the Mirnograd-Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) agglomeration in the southwest of the DPR.
The city of Pokrovsk has largely fallen under Russian control since then, with the Ukrainian troops remaining encircled in Mirnograd despite the continuous effort by Kiev to relieve them. Publicly, Ukrainian leadership has repeatedly denied the encirclements, insisting that the situation in the aforementioned locations was “under control” and describing the Russian advances as small-scale “infiltration” of reconnaissance units.
