Russia claims it has captured two villages in eastern Ukraine where its forces have been steadily advancing for months, as Ukraine’s president urged allies to deliver all the weapons they have promised to send to Kyiv.
The Russian Defence Ministry said on Sunday that soldiers have captured the village of Yantarne in the eastern Donetsk region, about 10km (six miles) southwest of Kurakhove, a key logistics hub that Moscow claimed to have seized last week – a day after Russia’s army said it had also taken new territory northwest of Kurakhove.
The Defence Ministry added that soldiers had also captured the village of Kalinove in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
The village is on the western bank of the Oskil River, which for a long time formed the front line between the two armies in the region.
A Ukrainian official, quoted by the AFP news agency, said on Thursday that Russian forces had managed to establish a bridgehead on the western bank after crossing the river.
Russia’s army has spent months making attempts to cross the river, which also cuts through Kupiansk, a city recaptured by Ukraine in its 2022 counteroffensive.
Separately, the Russian Defence Ministry said that over the past 24 hours, Russia’s forces have carried out strikes on Ukrainian military airfields, personnel and vehicles in 139 locations using the air force, drones, missiles and artillery.
Ukrainian air defences downed 60 out of 94 drones launched by Russia overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force.
It said that 34 drones were “lost”, in reference to Ukraine’s use of electronic warfare to redirect Russian drones.
Falling drone fragments damaged houses in the Kharkiv, Sumy and Poltava regions, but no one was hurt, the air force said.
In the southern Kherson region, three people were injured by drones on Sunday, regional authorities said, and about 23,000 households were left without electricity after Russian shelling damaged power equipment in the city.
The attack targeted the Dniprovskyi district along the Dnipro River, an area of Kherson that is regularly shelled by Russian forces on the opposite bank.
Kherson’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said Kherson city and about 50 settlements in the surrounding region had been shelled by Russian forces over the past 24 hours.
“The Russian military shelled social infrastructure and residential areas of the region’s settlements, in particular, damaging two multistorey buildings and eight private houses,” Prokudin said on Telegram.
In the Russian-controlled section of the Kherson region, a Ukrainian drone attacked a car, killing a 76-year-old woman outside her house, Russian-installed Governor Vladimir Saldo said on Telegram.
Zelenskyy appeals to allies
In a statement on Sunday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on allies to honour all promises to supply Ukraine with weapons, including those to counter Russian air attacks.
Zelenskyy said that over the past week, Russian forces had launched hundreds of attacks on Ukraine and nearly 700 aerial bombs and more than 600 attack drones were used.
“Every week, the Russian war continues only because the Russian army retains its ability to terrorise Ukraine and exploit its superiority in the sky,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app.
“The decisions made at the NATO summit in Washington, as well as those adopted during the Ramstein meetings regarding air defences for Ukraine, have still not been fully implemented,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukraine’s leader this week said he had discussed with partners and the United States the possibility of granting Ukraine licences to produce air defence systems and missiles.
Task force for oil spill
Meanwhile, Russian officials said an emergency task force arrived in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region on Sunday as an oil spill in the Kerch Strait from two storm-stricken tankers continues to spread a month after it was first detected.
The task force, which includes Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov, was set up after Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday called on authorities to ramp up the response to the spill, calling it “one of the most serious environmental challenges we have faced in recent years”.
Kurenkov said that “the most difficult situation” had developed near the port of Taman in the Krasnodar region, where fuel oil continues to leak into the sea from the damaged part of the Volgoneft-239 tanker.
Kurenkov was quoted as saying by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the remaining oil will be pumped out of the tanker’s stern.
In response to Putin’s call for action, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi accused Russia of “beginning to demonstrate its alleged ‘concern’ only after the scale of the disaster became too obvious to conceal its terrible consequences”.
“Russia’s practice of first ignoring the problem, then admitting its inability to solve it, and ultimately leaving the entire Black Sea region alone with the consequences is yet another proof of its international irresponsibility,” Tykhyi said on Friday.
The Kerch Strait is an important global shipping route, providing passage from the inland Sea of Azov to the Black Sea. It has also been a key point of conflict between Russia and Ukraine after Moscow annexed the peninsula in 2014.
In 2016, Ukraine took Moscow to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, where it accused Russia of trying to seize control of the area illegally. In 2021, Russia closed the strait for several months.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy’s office, described the oil spill last month as a “large-scale environmental disaster” and called for additional sanctions on Russian tankers.
