The Russian Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that its forces had captured village of Rozlyv in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the focal point of their steady westward advance through the area.
According to Ukraine’s military, Russian forces had launched five attacks on Rozlyv and the nearby village of Kostiantynopil, but made no acknowledgement that Rozlyv was now in Russian hands.
A late evening report by the Ukrainian General Staff said three battles were still going on in the area.
DeepState, a Ukrainian blog that tracks the 1,000-km (600-mile) front line using open sources, had reported that Russian advances over the past 24 hours near Rozlyv.
It also reported heavy fighting further east near Toretsk, another heavily contested town.
DAILY POST reports that Rozlyv lies south of Pokrovsk, a town targeted by Russian forces for many weeks and site of Ukraine’s only colliery producing coking coal.
After failing in their initial advance on the capital Kyiv in the first weeks after their February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces have concentrated their efforts on seizing control of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Both regions, partly controlled by Russian troops, were annexed by Russia in 2022, an action denounced by Ukraine and its Western partners.
In Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, further south, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said Russian shelling killed one person in a frontline settlement that he did not identify.
Also in the Russian city of Taganrog, east of the Ukrainian border, the acting governor of Rostov region, Yuri Slyusar, said Ukrainian drones had damaged two high-rise buildings.
According to him, 85 residents had been evacuated from one of the buildings.