June 18 (Reuters) – Russia reported fierce fighting on Sunday in three sections of the front line in Ukraine, a day after hosting an African peacekeeping mission that failed to arouse enthusiasm in either Moscow or Kiev.
A Russian-installed official said Ukraine had regained Five pointsa village in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia, and were entrenching themselves there while coming under fire from Russian artillery.
“The enemy’s ‘wave-like’ offensives yielded results, despite huge losses,” the official, Vladimir Rogov, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not mention Piatykhatky in its daily update, in which it said his forces had repelled Ukrainian attacks on three sections of the 1,000 km (600 mi) front line. A separate statement from Russia’s Vostok group of forces said Ukraine had not taken the deal.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the reports from the battlefield.
There was no comment from Ukraine, which last week said it had recaptured another nearby settlement, Lobkove, and a chain of towns further east, in the Donetsk region, at the start of their long-awaited counteroffensive.
Ukrainian officials have imposed an information blackout to help operational security, but say Russia has suffered far greater losses than Ukraine during its new assault.
A regional official said that Ukrainian forces had destroyed a major Russian ammunition depot in the occupied Kherson region, part of a week-long effort by kyiv to wreak havoc on Russian supply lines.
British defense intelligence said heavy fighting in recent days had focused on Zaporizhzhia, west of Donetsk and around Bakhmut, which Russian mercenaries captured last month after the longest battle of the war.
“In all of these areas, Ukraine continues to conduct offensive operations and has made small progress,” he said on Twitter.
Russian defense operations have been “relatively effective in the south,” with both sides suffering heavy casualties, according to the assessment.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who rarely comments on the course of the war, made two unusually detailed interventions last week, mocking the Ukrainian push and saying Kiev’s forces had “no possibility” despite being newly equipped with western tanks.
His comments appeared intended to reassure the Russians at a crucial time, almost 16 months into the conflict, as Ukraine seeks to break months of virtual stalemate and retake the 18% of its territory that remains under Russian control.
PEACE MISSION
In 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 the time had come for Russia and Ukraine to start negotiations to end the war. .
putin answered reciting a series of familiar accusations denied by Ukraine and the West and saying that it was kyiv, not Moscow, that was refusing to talk. He thanked Ramaphosa for his “noble mission”.
Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Putin had shown interest in the plan, but that it would be “difficult to carry out.”
In kyiv the day before, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky he had told the African delegation, the first since the start of the war to hold separate face-to-face talks with both leaders about their peace initiative, that allowing negotiations now would simply “freeze the war” and the suffering of the Ukrainian people.
The wide gap between the two sides was further underscored when Putin used a landmark economic forum on Friday to personally smear Zelenskiy and reaffirm the goals of “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” Ukraine that he set for himself on the first day of the war, and which Kiev and the West reject it as a false pretext for invasion.
However, Ramaphosa tried to present the trip to Ukraine and Russia in a positive light, tweeting on Sunday that the “Africa Peace Initiative has been impactful and its ultimate success will be measured by the goal, which is to stop the war.”
He said the Africans would continue to talk to both Putin and Zelenskiy and report to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on their efforts so far.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Sunday that they did not expect immediate results. “But it’s a start that we hope will pay off in the end.”
MONTHS OF DESTRUCTION
The war destroyed Ukrainian towns and cities, forced millions of people to flee their homes, and caused heavy but undisclosed casualties between both armies, as well as killing thousands of Ukrainian civilians.
Each side accused the other of blowing up a massive Ukrainian dam on June 6 and flooding large swaths of the war zone.
In the Russian-controlled town of Hola Prystan, Reuters filmed volunteers drawing water from flooded houses on Saturday and distributing bread and drinking water.
“Not a single person in the world will be punished for this torture that we are going through, for this terrible catastrophe,” said Tamara, a 78-year-old retired nurse.
“That’s what frustrates me. No one is punished for that. And I would like at least one person to be brought (to trial) and punished for everything. For the whole world to see.”
Additional reporting by Dan Peleschuk, Tom Balmforth and Wendell Roelf Writing by Mark Trevelyan in London Editing by Frances Kerry and David Evans
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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