Russia reported fierce fighting on Sunday on three sections of the front line in Ukraine while Ukraine’s president praised his troops for repelling Russia’s advances and claimed their counter-offensive was progressing well.
The assessments of action along the 1,000-km (600-mile) long front were made a day after an African peace mission wrapped up talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The mission failed to spark enthusiasm from either Moscow or Kyiv.
A Russian official said Ukraine had recaptured Piatykhatky, a village in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, and were entrenching themselves there while coming under fire from Russian artillery.
Russia’s defence ministry made no mention of Piatykhatky in its daily update, in which it said its forces had repelled Ukrainian attacks in three sections of the front line. Russia’s Vostok group of forces said Ukraine had failed to take the settlement.
The evening report by the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces also made no mention of Piatykhatky. Last week, Ukraine said it had recaptured a nearby settlement, Lobkove, and villages further east, in the Donetsk region, at the start of its counteroffensive.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised his troops for being “very effective in repelling assaults” near Avdiivka, one of the hot spots in the fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Reuters could not independently verify battlefield reports.
British defence intelligence said fighting had focused on Zaporizhzhia, western Donetsk and near Bakhmut, captured last month by Russians after the war’s longest battle.
“In all these areas, Ukraine continues to pursue offensive operations and has made small advances,” it claimed on Twitter.
Putin, who rarely comments on the course of the war, made two unusually detailed remarks last week in which he derided the Ukrainian push and said Kyiv’s forces had “no chance” despite being newly equipped with Western tanks.
At talks in St Petersburg on Saturday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa presented Putin with a 10-point peace initiative from seven African countries and told him it was time for Russia and Ukraine to start negotiations to end the war.
Putin responded with accusations saying it was Kyiv, not Moscow, that was refusing to talk. He thanked Ramaphosa for his “noble mission.”
In Kyiv, Zelenskyy had told the African delegation—the first since the start of the war to hold face-to-face talks with both leaders—that talks would just “freeze the war.”
The gulf between the two sides was further underlined when Putin used an economic forum on Friday to restate the aims of “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” Ukraine.
Ramaphosa said in a tweet on Sunday that the mission had been “impactful and its ultimate success will be measured on the objective, which is stopping the war.” He said the Africans would keep talking to both Putin and Zelenskyy.
