Ukrainian forces have recaptured a village in the country’s east after intense battles with Russian troops as part of their counter-offensive, the country’s military said.
The village of Andriivka – about six miles south of the Russia-occupied town of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region – is the latest gain for Kyiv in a counter-offensive that has seen slow but steady gains by Ukrainian forces.
The announcement of reclaiming Andriivka came early on Friday from the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 15 September 2023.
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/tKSmS6UlRk
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/NsvSVAkC60— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) September 15, 2023
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The 3rd Assault Brigade said it captured the village after surrounding the Russian garrison in Andriivka in what it described as a “lightning operation” and destroying it over two days.
It described the capture of Andriivka as a breakthrough on the southern flank of Bakhmut and “key to success in all further directions”.
Just hours before confirming the capture of Andriivka early on Friday, the brigade contested a statement by Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar saying the village was reclaimed.
The fighting in and around Bakhmut, a salt-mining town now in complete ruins, marked the war’s longest and bloodiest engagement.
Today, there are reasons to praise the work of Ukraine’s Security Service, its personnel, and the Ukrainian Navy.
I thank them for today’s triumph—destroying the occupant’s air defense system in our Crimea.
Very significant outcome! Glory to everyone who fights for Ukraine! pic.twitter.com/52o83hpmlqAdvertisement— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 14, 2023
After Russian forces led by the Wagner Group military contractor captured Bakhmut in May, Ukrainian forces sought to envelop it from the south and the north, gaining ground yard by yard in the past three months.
In late June, Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin led his fighters from eastern Ukraine into Russia as part of a short-lived mutiny that represented the biggest challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s rule in over two decades.
Mr Prigozhin and several of his top lieutenants died in a suspicious plane crash while traveling between Moscow and St Petersburg last month.
Andriivka is located between the settlements of Kurdiumivka and the heights of Klischiivka in the Donetsk region, where fighting has been especially intense.
Ukraine’s General Staff said Ukrainian forces also inflicted heavy losses on Russian troops as part of its offensive in nearby Klishchiivka village.
Ms Maliar said that Ukraine had regained 19 square miles of land around Bakhmut since the start of the counter-offensive in June.
Military analysts and US officials have questioned the expenditure of forces around the city, but Ukrainian military leaders have said they were successfully exhausting Russian forces by keeping them fixed in position.
The recapture of Andriivka comes weeks after an important tactical victory for Ukrainian forces in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, where they punctured through Russia’s first line of defence and recaptured the village of Robotyne.
The gains in the south are considered more strategically significant since they bring Ukraine’s troops closer to the shores of the Sea of Azov, where they could try to cut the land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Isolating Crimea would divide the Russian-occupied territory in southern Ukraine and undermine Russian supply lines.
In the south, one person died and six were injured in shelling in the Kherson region, Ukraine’s presidential office said on Friday.
It also reported air strikes on the town of Orikhiv in the Zaporishzhia region.
Also on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that some 300,000 Russians have signed volunteer military contracts this year, noting that they were driven by “high patriotic motives”.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected at the White House and on Capitol Hill next week as he visits the US during the United Nations General Assembly.
Mr Zelensky’s trip comes as US congress is debating President Joe Biden’s request to provide as much as 24 billion dollars (£19.2 billion) in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine as it fights the Russian invasion.
