MOSCOW, March 26 (Reuters) – Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday that its forces had taken control of a new village in its slow advance through eastern Ukraine, Sheviakivka in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.
Ukraine’s military made no acknowledgement that the village on the Russian border had changed hands.
A Ukrainian paratroop unit said it had retaken a village to the south in Dnipropetrovsk region that had earlier fallen under Russian control.
Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield reports.
Ukraine will aim to repel a widely anticipated new Russian springtime offensive along the front line amid a breakdown in U.S.-backed peace talks by building on recent tactical successes. The campaign focuses on the “Fortress Belt” of heavily defended cities in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that the U.S. was making its offer of security guarantees for a peace deal conditional on Kyiv ceding to Russia all of Donbas, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The Russian Defence Ministry report gave few details on the capture of Sheviakivka, but senior Russian military officials have said Moscow intends to build up buffer zones in both Kharkiv and Sumy regions on its border.
Ukraine’s Command of Paratroop Assault Forces, writing on Facebook, said the 95th Separate Assault Brigade had taken control of the village of Berezove, just inside Dnipropetrovsk region.
“Step by step paratroops are pushing Russian forces out of Ukrainian lands,” the statement said.
Zelenskiy and other officials have said Ukrainian forces have made advances in southern areas of the 1,250-km (775-mile) front line in recent weeks.
(Reporting by Ksenia Orlova, writing by Anna Peverieri; editing by Ron Popeski and Himani Sarkar)
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