KYIV — Ukraine said its forces have recaptured Klishchiivka, a village in Donetsk some nine kilometers south of Bakhmut.
“Klishchiivka was cleared of Russians and liberated,” Ukraine’s Ground Forces Commander Oleksandr Sirskiy said in a statement early Monday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Ukrainian soldiers for their efforts in his daily address on Sunday evening, saying: “I would like to especially mention the warriors who are gradually regaining Ukraine’s territory, especially in the Bakhmut area … well done!”
On Sunday, Ukrainian soldiers posted a video on social media showing troops next to ruins in Klishchiivka with the Ukrainian flag and their brigade flags. The fighters warned that Russian forces are not planning to give up strategically important locations around Bakhmut and are attacking their positions with all the weapons they have.
Hanna Maliar, deputy defense minister of Ukraine, confirmed that the Kremlin’s forces are trying to regain lost positions near Klishchiivka and Andriivka, another village near Bakhmut which Ukrainian forces liberated on Friday.
Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut were having to defend their positions and attack at the same time, Maliar said in a statement on Monday morning.
It took nine months for Russian forces to capture Bakhmut and the area around it following the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to U.S. estimates, Moscow saw more than 20,000 troops killed and 60,000 wounded in seizing the city, which has seen some of the most brutal fighting in the war and has been reduced to ruin.
Source : POLITICO