MOSCOW: Russian forces took control of two more settlements in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday, the latest in a series of gains it has reported in its steady advance westward.
The ministry statement said Russian forces were now in control of Petropavlivka, a village between the towns of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove, focal points in fighting in recent months in the area.
It also noted the capture of Vremivka, one of a cluster of small towns further south in the Donetsk region.
The ministry also said Russian forces hit Ukraine’s military facilities with high-precision weapons in response to an Ukrainian attack on Russia’s southern Belgorod region with US-made ATACMS missiles.
Reuters could not independently verify battlefield reports from either side in the 34-month-old conflict.
Ukrainian military statements made no mention of either of the two villages changing hands, but referred to heavy fighting near the key city of Pokrovsk.
Ukraine’s popular Deep State blog, which documents changes in the positions held by both sides using open source materials, placed both Petropavlivka and Vremivka in Russian hands.
The spokesperson for the Ukrainian military’s Khortytsya, or eastern, group of forces dismissed for the second day running any notion that Russian forces had entered Pokrovsk.
“There have been no developments in Pokrovsk, things are stable,” Viktor Trehubov told national television. “The enemy is not there.”
The city is a transport hub and site of Ukraine’s only coking coal pit, where work was suspended this week.
Russia’s military, after failing to advance on the capital Kyiv in the weeks following its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, has since focused its efforts of capturing all of the Donbas — made up of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
It now holds about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory.
The Ukrainian military’s General Staff, in a late night report, said Russian forces trying to pierce Ukrainian defenses had launched 84 attacks in the Pokrovsk sector. Fourteen battles were still raging in the area.
The report listed a series of villages in the sector which it said had come under Russian attack — including three which Russia’s military said it secured in the past week and another where Russia said it took control last month.
Russia claims capture of two settlements in eastern Ukraine
https://arab.news/rfc2c
Russia claims capture of two settlements in eastern Ukraine
- Ukrainian military statements made no mention of either of the two villages changing hands, but referred to heavy fighting near the key city of Pokrovsk
Greek coast guard search for 15 after migrant boat found adrift
- The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water
ATHENS: Greek coast guard were on Monday searching for 15 people who fell into the water from a migrant boat that was found drifting off the coast of Crete with 17 bodies on board.
The 17 fatalities, all of them men, were discovered on Saturday on the craft, which was taking on water and partially deflated, some 26 nautical miles (48 kilometers) southwest of the island.
Post-mortem examinations were being carried out to determine how they died but Greek public television channel ERT suggested they may have suffered from hypothermia or dehydration.
A Greek coast guard spokeswoman told AFP that two survivors reported that “15 people fell in the water” after the motor cut out on Thursday, then the vessel drifted for two days.
At the time, Crete and much of the rest of Greece was battered by heavy rain and storms.
The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water.
The vessel had 34 people on board and had left the Libyan port of Tobruk on Wednesday, the Greek port authorities said. Most of those who died came from Sudan and Egypt.
It was initially spotted by a Turkish-flagged cargo ship on Saturday, triggering a search that included ships and aircraft from the Greek coast guard and the European Union border agency Frontex.
Migrants have been trying to reach Crete from Libya for the last year, as a way of entering the European Union. But the Mediterranean crossing is perilous.
In Brussels, the EU’s 27 members on Monday backed a significant tightening of immigration policy, including the concept of returning failed asylum-seekers to “return hubs” outside the bloc.
The UN refugee agency said more than 16,770 asylum seekers in the EU have arrived on Crete since the start of the year — more than any other island in the Aegean Sea.
Greece’s conservative government has also toughened its migration policy, suspending asylum claims for three months, particularly those coming to Crete from Libya.
