A Ukrainian serviceman patrols on a street in the village of Blagodatne, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on June 16.ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP/Getty Images
Ukraine’s armed forces have halted a Russian offensive towards the cities of Kupiansk and Lyman in the east of the country, and are advancing in the south, a senior Ukrainian defence official said on Friday.
“We had very fierce battles in the Kupiansk and Lyman directions, but our soldiers stopped the enemy there,” Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar told Ukrainian television.
Ukraine is in the early stages of its most ambitious counterattack since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February, 2022, and says it has retaken eight villages, its first substantial gains on the battlefield for seven months.
But Russia still holds swathes of territory in eastern and southern Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces have yet to push to the main defensive lines that Russia has had months to prepare.
“Indeed, we still have the main events ahead of us. And the main blow is still to come. Indeed, some of the reserves – these are staged things – will be activated later,” Ms. Maliar said.
She said Russian forces still aimed to gain control of the whole of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military operation in the south was going according to plan and its forces were advancing, even if minefields were slowing them down, she said.
“In the military, according to their reports and positions, everything is moving according to plan. It is not necessary to expect the offensive to be something very fast,” Ms. Maliar said.
“Every day we are advancing, every day. Yes, it is gradual, but our forces are gaining a foothold on these borders and they are advancing steadily.”
Reuters was unable to verify the situation on the battlefield. Each side says the other has suffered heavy losses since Ukraine began its counteroffensive, and Moscow has not acknowledged Ukraine’s recent military gains.
At least three people were killed in Russian attacks in southern Ukraine on Friday, including two who died after a trolleybus company came under fire in the city of Kherson, regional officials said.
Oleksandr Prokudin, the governor of the Kherson region, said two men aged 55 and 43 were killed by “targeted fire” on the Kherson trolleybus company in what he described as “another Russian terrorist attack.”
Several other people were injured, he said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
Video footage posted by the regional authorities showed a wounded man on the ground inside the trolleybus company’s building, with broken glass and blood on the floor.
Another dead or wounded man lay on the ground outside, and a man was shown being lifted on a stretcher into an ambulance.
The prosecutor’s office said the attack took place around 10.20 a.m. (0720 GMT) and that it had launched an investigation.
Yuriy Malashko, the governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, wrote on Telegram that a 35-year-old man had been killed in a Russian artillery barrage on the village of Mala Tokmachka and that four people had been wounded elsewhere in the region.
Russia, which began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, denies targeting civilians.
Russian forces were pushed out of Kherson city in November and have continued shelling it from positions they hold in the wider Kherson region despite flooding caused by the destruction of the Khakovka dam, which lies upstream from the city on the Dnipro River.
Kyiv has reported making advances in southern Ukraine in a counterattack against the Russian forces, and both sides have reported heavy fighting in parts of the south.