Ukraine says it has retaken a village – as Russia says it is repelling attacks

Ukraine’s military has reported recapturing a village in the southeast of the country amid Russian claims of repelling multiple attacks in the area.

It is the latest indication that a highly anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive may be underway even as officials in Kyiv stop short of publicly acknowledging it.

The 68th Separate Hunting Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces posted a video on Facebook showing soldiers installing a Ukrainian flag on a damaged building in what the post said is the village of Blahodatne in the partially occupied eastern Donetsk region.

In a separate social media post, Ukraine’s Ground Forces confirmed the brigade has retaken Blahodatne.

Brigade spokesman Myroslav Semeniuk said an assault team captured six Russian troops after entering several buildings where 60 soldiers were holed up.

“The enemy keeps shelling us but this won’t stop us,” he said.

“The next village we plan to reclaim is Urozhayne. After that, (we’ll proceed) further south.”

While the recapture of Blahodatne points to a small Ukrainian advance, western and Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly said efforts to expel Russian troops more broadly are expected to take time.

Russia has made much of how its troops have held their ground elsewhere.

The Russian Defence Ministry on Sunday continued to insist it is repelling Ukrainian attacks in the area.

It said in a statement that Ukrainian attempts at offensive operations on the southern Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia axes of the frontline over the past 24 hours have been “unsuccessful”.

Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in the Zaporizhzhia region, said Blahodatne, along with two other villages in Zaporizhzhia, are in a “grey area” in terms of who controls them.

According to Mr Rogov, the Ukrainian forces briefly seized another village in the neighbouring Donetsk region but were swiftly routed by Russian troops.

“The situation is developing. Nothing extraordinary is happening,” he said in a Telegram post.

The Russian military has also accused Ukrainian forces of attacking — albeit unsuccessfully — one of its ships in the Black Sea.

According to a statement by Russia’s Defence Ministry, the attempted attack took place on Sunday when six unmanned speedboats targeted Russia’s Priazovye reconnaissance vessel, which was “monitoring the situation and ensuring security along the routes of the TurkStream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the southeastern part of the Black Sea”.

All the speedboats were destroyed by the Russian military and the ship did not sustain any damage, the ministry said.

The claim could not be independently verified and Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.

Moscow made a similar allegation last month and said Ukrainian unmanned speedboats targeted another reconnaissance ship in the Black Sea, the Ivan Khurs.

Several days later, Ukraine’s Defence Ministry published video that appeared to show a marine drone heading for the Ivan Khurs but did not show the drone hitting the ship.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that “counteroffensive and defensive actions” were underway against Russian forces.

He refused to disclose any details but asked to pass it on to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his top commanders were in a “positive” mindset as their troops engaged in intense fighting along the frontline.

Mr Zelensky made the remarks at a Kyiv press conference alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in response to a question about Mr Putin’s comment a day earlier that Ukraine’s counteroffensive has started — and Ukrainian forces are taking “significant losses”.

Top Ukrainian authorities have stopped short of announcing a full-blown counteroffensive is underway, though some western analysts said fiercer fighting and reported use of reserve troops suggested it is.

Also on Sunday, Mr Zelensky’s top adviser said Moscow’s troops opened fire at a boat evacuating people from Russian-occupied areas to Ukrainian-held territory along a flooded frontline far to the south.

The battlefield showdown in the southeast and chaotic scenes from inundated southern Ukraine marks the latest upheaval and bloodshed in Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is in its 16th month.

Andriy Yermak, Mr Zelensky’s chief of staff, said the injured were taken to hospital in the southern city of Kherson, on the western bank of the swollen Dnieper River.

Three ambulances were seen dropping off injured evacuees at a hospital, with one splattered in blood and taken by stretcher into the emergency department.

Many civilians have said Russian authorities in occupied areas were forcing would-be evacuees to present Russian passports before taking them to safety.

Since then, many small boats have shuttled from Ukrainian-held areas on the west bank across the river — which has been flooded since a dam breach upstream on Tuesday — to fetch and ferry over desperate civilians stuck on rooftops, in attics and other islands of dry amid the deluge.