Nov 6 (Reuters) – Russia and Ukraine presented conflicting versions of the situation on the front line in the Zaporizhia region over the weekend, with Moscow claiming to have stopped Kyiv’s counter-offensive while the army Ukrainian says it continues to move forward.
Since the start of its counter-offensive in June, Ukraine has recaptured some small villages in the Zaporizhia region, in the southeast of the country. Progress has been limited, however, and the vast front line in the east and south of the country has changed little over the past year.
“The enemy was stopped and its counter-offensive, which had been so publicized, was completely curbed,” Yevgeny Balitsky, Moscow’s top official in the Zaporizhia region, told the Russian news agency. Russian State, in comments published this Monday.
According to him, small battles continue near the village of Robotyne and near the village of Shcherbaky, which is about 22 km to the northwest.
With both sides controlling the distribution of information about the fighting and claiming victories over small areas, it is difficult to determine the actual progress of troops and the intensity of the fighting.
Ukraine’s 128th Assault Brigade said Monday that a Russian airstrike killed 19 of its soldiers in the Zaporizhia region last week.
Ukrainian authorities ordered an investigation into the attack after learning that soldiers had been killed during an awards ceremony in a village near the front lines in the country’s southeast.
On Sunday evening, the Ukrainian General Staff said Russian forces had carried out several unsuccessful assaults near Robotin and Verbove, a village a few kilometers to the east.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a daily briefing that Russian forces had repelled Ukrainian attacks near Verbove and Robotyne.
According to analysts from the American think tank the Institute for the Study of War, however, Ukraine has made “limited advances west of Verbove.”
The Ukrainian General Staff also said that its forces continued offensive operations in the direction of Melitopol, west of the Zaporizhia region, “exhausting the enemy along the entire front line.”
Moscow said this weekend it had repelled Ukrainian air attacks.
Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky denied over the weekend that the war with Russia was at a “stalemate” after his commander-in-chief, General Valeriy Zaluzhny, said the conflict was moving towards static fighting and attrition . (Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Raju Gopalakrishnan; French version by Dagmarah Mackos, editing by Kate Entringer)
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