Ukraine recaptures village as Russian forces hold other lines

Kyiv, The Gulf Observer: Ukraine’s military on Sunday reported recapturing a southeastern village as Russian forces claimed to repel multiple attacks in the area, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s top adviser said six people were injured after Moscow’s troops opened fire at a boat evacuating people from Russian-occupied areas to Ukrainian-held territory along a flooded front line far to the south.

The battlefield showdown in the southeast and chaotic scenes from inundated southern Ukraine marked the latest upheaval and bloodshed in Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its 16th month.

Andriy Yermak, the president’s chief of staff, wrote on his Telegram account that the injured were rushed to hospital in the southern city of Kherson, on the western bank of the swollen Dnieper River. An Associated Press team on site saw three ambulances drop off injured evacuees at a hospital, one of whom was splattered with blood and whisked by stretcher into the emergency room.

Many civilians have said Russian authorities in occupied areas were forcing would-be evacuees to present Russian passports before taking them to safety. Since then, many small boats have shuttled from Ukrainian-held areas on the west bank across the river — which has been flooded since a dam breach upstream on Tuesday — to fetch and ferry over desperate civilians stuck on rooftops, in attics and other islands of dry amid the deluge.

To the northeast, nearly half-way up the more than 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, Ukrainian forces said they drove out Russian fighters from the village of Blahodatne, in the partially occupied Donetsk region. Ukraine’s 68th Separate Hunting Brigade posted a video on Facebook that showed soldiers installing a Ukrainian flag on a damaged building in the village.

The advance amounted to the latest indication that a highly anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive might be underway — even as officials in Kyiv stopped short of publicly acknowledging it.