MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s defence ministry said on Tuesday its forces have captured the settlement of Pivdenne in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, the latest target of Moscow’s slow but grinding push through the industrial Donbas area.
Pivdenne, which Russia calls by its Soviet-era name of Leninskoe, adjoins Toretsk, a Ukrainian stronghold and coal mining town towards which Russia began pushing in June.
The Ukraine military’s General Staff made no reference to Pivdenne in a late evening report, but said Russian forces had tried to breach Ukrainian defences near Pokrovsk 15 times in the past 24 hours. Three skirmishes were still going on.
Ukrainian military bloggers dismissed any notion that Russian troops had pushed their way into Toretsk, but said areas around the town were gripped by heavy fighting.
One blogger calling himself “officer” said Russian soldiers were attempting to slip into the town in small groups.
In 2022, Ukrainian authorities gave Pivdenne’s pre-war population as 1,404, and Toretsk’s as around 30,000. Kyiv did not immediately comment on Pivdenne’s status.
The towns are close to the front line in place since 2014, when Russian-backed forces seized parts of Donetsk region, including the city of Horlivka, 12 km (7 miles) from Pivdenne.
Russia’s push for Toretsk is one of the most active combat zones in the Donetsk region, with Moscow’s forces also moving towards Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian transport hub around 70km (43 miles) west of Toretsk.
Moscow said on Sunday that its forces had taken two villages, Prohres and Yevhenivka, on the approaches to Pokrovsk. Ukraine’s General Staff recorded 40 Russia assaults in the Pokrovsk sector, with 18 clashes continuing.
Russia says it annexed the Donetsk region, along with three other Ukrainian provinces, in September 2022, and that Kyiv must vacate the regions as a precondition for peace talks.
Kyiv says it plans to return all four regions by force and to expel every Russian soldier from its territory.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Anastasia Teterevleva and Felix Light; Editing by Ron Popeski and Stephen Coates)
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