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Zelensky visits Ukraine front as Moscow claims fresh gains

Russia said on Monday its forces had captured the village of Vovche in eastern Ukraine, the latest in a string of frontline advances Moscow has claimed in recent weeks.

The announcement came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited special forces in the border region of Kharkiv, where Moscow’s forces launched a surprise ground offensive in May but failed to make any major breakthrough.

Now grinding through a third year of fighting, neither Kyiv nor Moscow has managed to swing the conflict decisively in their favour, even though Moscow’s forces have gained ground in recent months.

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Moscow’s defence ministry said in a daily briefing its units had “liberated” Vovche in the eastern region of Donetsk.

The settlement lies about 16 kilometres (10 miles) northwest of Avdiivka, a factory town Russia captured in February.

Ukrainian authorities urged remaining residents to evacuate from Vovche last month amid Russian air strikes.

Only seven people were left in the village out of a pre-conflict population of around 100.

Industrial Donetsk has borne the brunt of fighting between Ukrainian troops and invading Russian forces.

It has been partially controlled by Kremlin-supported separatists since 2014.

– ‘Counting on you’ –

The Kremlin claimed to have annexed it and three other Ukrainian territories late in 2022 despite not fully controlling them.

Ukraine’s head of the Donetsk region Vadym Filashkin said Russian forces had killed three people and wounded three more on Monday in the town of Toretsk, which is under Kyiv’s control.

Russian troops have been closing in on the town that was once home to around 30,000 people in a fresh assault, following a period of relative calm.

“One person was also killed in Grodivka,” Filashkin added — a village that had a pre-war population of around 2,200 people and lies on the path of Russian forces towards the rail hub of Pokrvosk.

The Kharkiv region, which Zelensky visited on Monday, has been under daily shelling by Russian forces since they invaded in February 2022.

“Kharkiv… The forward command post of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in the area of Vovchansk,” Zelensky wrote on social media, announcing the visit.

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Zelensky described the front in Kharkiv as “one of the most difficult” and told assembled special forces: “The whole country is counting on you.”

The Ukrainian military said on Monday it had repelled six Russian attacks on the Kharkiv front line over the past day, including at Vovchansk.

Russian forces have been trying to capture the small town five kilometres from its border since launching the offensive in the Kharkiv region in May.

Moscow made its most significant territorial gains in around 18 months with that offensive, but fell short of its ambition to create a “security zone” to protect Russian border towns from Ukrainian attacks.

Russian forces also detained 25 people in parts of Ukraine they control for allegedly supporting and “aiding” Kyiv, Russia’s National Guard said.

The arrests were made in Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, large swathes of which Moscow captured after it launched its full-scale assault on the country in February 2022.

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