MOSCOW, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, said on Tuesday that Moscow’s forces were advancing along the entire front line in Ukraine and were targeting surrounded Ukrainian troops in the town of Myrnohrad.
In a command post meeting with officers of the Centre Grouping which is fighting in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, Gerasimov said President Vladimir Putin had ordered the defeat of Ukrainian forces in Myrnohrad, a town with a pre-war population of some 46,000 people to the east of Pokrovsk.
Russia had taken control of more than 30% of Myrnohrad’s buildings, Gerasimov said.
Russia, which uses the Soviet-era name of Krasnoarmeysk to refer to neighbouring Pokrovsk, says it has taken the whole of the city and claims to have also encircled Ukrainian forces in Myrnohrad, which Russians call Dimitrov.
Ukraine has repeatedly denied Russian claims that Pokrovsk has fallen and says it forces still hold part of the city and are fighting back in Myrnohrad.
Russia currently controls 19.2% of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, Luhansk, more than 80% of Donetsk, about 75% of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
Ukraine says it is holding its defensive lines and forcing Russia to pay a high price for what it says are relatively modest gains.
Putin said last week that Russia would take full control of Ukraine’s Donbas region by force unless Ukrainian forces withdraw, something Kyiv has flatly rejected.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Guy FaulconbridgeEditing by Andrew Osborn)
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