In a reconquest considered as the first Ukrainian victory in its counteroffensive against Russian troops in the south of the country, the Ukrainian army announced this Sunday (11), that it recovered the town of Blagodatne, which is located between Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia. According to Ukraine, the village was considered a strategic zone for the Russians, who had been occupying the place since the beginning of the conflict.
The Ukrainian military reportedly captured two Russian soldiers and some separatist fighters in the village.
After the reconquest, Ukrainians hoisted the country’s flag among the village’s ruined buildings. “The glorious soldiers of the 68th brigade … liberated the locality of Blagodatne,” the Ukrainian army’s ground forces said on Facebook, along with a video showing soldiers with a Ukrainian flag in a destroyed building.
Blagodatne is located on the border between Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions in southeastern Ukraine. It is at this location that Moscow has been reporting significant Ukrainian attacks for nearly a week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday (10) that his army was undertaking a “counter-offensive action” against the Russians, without specifying whether this action was a major attack that the General Staff of Kiev has been preparing in recent months to target repel Russian troops from their territory.
On another front, the governor of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia, Sergei Axionov, announced this Sunday that rail traffic in the Kirovskoye district was suspended due to “damage” to the tracks. The Crimean chief, however, did not reveal what the damage was, but stated that “there were no casualties”. He also stressed that he is personally “in control of the situation”.
According to the Russian news channel on Telegram, Baza, the damage could be the result of an explosion of a freight train that happened around 16:00 (local time). “The explosion damaged the train tracks”, wrote a communication vehicle in the messaging application without identifying the perpetrators of the explosion.
Since the destruction of the iconic Kerch bridge, which connects Crimea to Russia, last October, the peninsula has been the target of frequent drone and missile attacks.
On the eve of this explosion, Axionov claimed that Russian air defense systems had shot down two ballistic missiles launched by Ukraine over the annexed peninsula. One of the main objectives of Ukraine at the moment is to attack the base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet located in the city of Sevastopol.
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