Ukraine says it’s recaptured southeastern village
Showdown occurs as Russian troops fire at civilians evacuating from Kherson floods.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s military on Sunday reported recapturing a southeastern village as Russian forces claimed to repel attacks in the area. Meanwhile, a regional official said three were killed when Moscow’s troops opened fire on a boat evacuating people from Russian-occupied areas to Ukrainian-held territory along a flooded front line far to the south.
The battlefield showdown in the southeast and chaotic scenes from inundated southern Ukraine marked the latest bloodshed in Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its 16th month.
Oleksandr Prokudin, governor of the Kherson region, said on his Telegram account that a 74-year-old man was among those who died in the attack on evacuees, which wounded 10. An Associated Press team saw three ambulances drop injured evacuees at a hospital, one of whom was splattered with blood and whisked by stretcher to the emergency room.
The Kherson region straddles the Dnipro River and has suffered heavy flooding since last week’s destruction of the Kakhovka dam. Ukraine and Russia each accuse the other of causing the dam breach. Russian forces occupy parts of the region on the eastern side of the river.
Civilians have said Russian authorities in occupied areas are forcing would-be evacuees to present Russian passports before taking them to safety. Many small boats have crossed the river from Ukrainian-held areas on the west bank to rescue desperate civilians stuck on rooftops and in attics amid the deluge.
To the northeast, nearly halfway up the 600-mile front line, Ukrainian forces drove Russian fighters from the village of Blahodatne in the partially occupied Donetsk region. Ukraine’s 68th Separate Hunting Brigade posted a video on Facebook that showed soldiers installing a Ukrainian flag on a damaged building in the village.
Myroslav Semeniuk, spokesman for the brigade, told the AP that an assault team captured six Russian troops after entering several buildings where around 60 soldiers were holed up.
“The enemy keeps shelling us, but this won’t stop us,” Semeniuk said. “The next village we plan to reclaim is Urozhayne. After that, [we’ll proceed] further south.”
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian troops in the area had advanced up to about a mile and taken control of another village, Makarivka.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that Ukrainian counteroffensive actions were underway. But while the recapture of Blahodatne pointed to a small Ukrainian advance, Western leaders have cautioned that efforts to broadly expel Russian troops will take time. Russia has made much of how its troops have held their ground elsewhere.
The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday continued to insist that it was 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 front line over the previous 24 hours were “unsuccessful.”
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in the Zaporizhzhia region, insisted that Blahodatne and two other villages were in a “gray area” in terms of who controls them. However, Rogov said in a Telegram post that Russian fighters had been forced to leave the village of Neskuchne in the
Donetsk region. In a video, fighters identifying themselves as members of a Ukrainian volunteer force claimed to have taken the village.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has asserted that Ukraine’s counteroffensive has started and said Ukrainian forces were taking “significant losses.”
In other developments, Ukrhydroenergo, Ukraine’s hydropower generator, said Sunday that water levels on a reservoir above the Kakhovka dam had dropped more than 23 feet since the rupture Tuesday.
Prokudin, governor of the Kherson region, said water levels on the Ukrainian-held west bank were receding, even if more than 32 settlements remain flooded. He said conditions were worse on the Russian-occupied eastern bank, which sits at a lower elevation.
Also Sunday, the Russian military accused Ukrainian forces of attacking — albeit unsuccessfully — one of its ships in the Black Sea.
According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, the attempt took place 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.”
The speedboats were destroyed by the Russian military, and the ship was undamaged, the ministry said. The claim could not be independently verified; Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.
Ukraine and Russia reported exchanging prisoners of war Sunday. Russia said 94 of its soldiers were freed; Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the president of Ukraine, said 95 Ukrainians were released.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has signed a decree ordering all Russian volunteer formations to sign contracts with the ministry by July 1, according to his deputy, Nikolai Pankov. The move would give the formations legal status and allow them to receive the same state benefits as contract soldiers.
Observers say the move probably targets the Wagner private military company. Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has a longrunning feud with the Russian military, said Sunday that the group would not sign such contracts “precisely because Shoigu cannot manage military formations normally.”