Defence Ministry of Russia has stated that its forces had captured the settlement of Novodmytrivka in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, their latest gain in what Defence Minister Andrei Belousov described as an accelerated advance.
Ukraine’s military did not mention the village, north of the key town of Kurakhove.
But in a late-night report, the General Staff noted it was among eight villages where Russian forces were engaged in fighting and trying to advance
Russian Defence Minister Belousov was shown in a video posted online visiting a command post in Ukraine manned by the Russian army grouping “North”, where he handed out medals for bravery.
“This work we have done here now has crushed the best (Ukrainian) units. Now the advance has accelerated. We have thwarted their entire 2025 campaign,” he said.
Ukraine’s General Staff said the Kurakhove sector of the 1,000-km front was gripped by heavy fighting. Ten of 35 armed clashes in this sector were still raging.
Russian forces hold a little less than 20% of Ukraine’s territory and have advanced through the Donetsk region over the past two months at their fastest rate since March 2022, according to open-source data.
They are approaching Kurakhove and the town of Pokrovsk to the north, the site of the sole colliery that supplies Ukraine’s steel industry with coking coal.
Russian forces have made gains still farther north near Kupiansk, a rail hub and logistics centre, in Kharkiv region and in the captured area of Kursk.
Russian soldiers executed five Ukrainian prisoners of war during a single incident in eastern Ukraine last month according to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine.
The authorities said in a statement that Russian troops shot the five unarmed soldiers after capturing them during an assault on their position on October 2 near the eastern town of Vuhledar.
The statement was accompanied by two grainy aerial photographs of the incident, which could not be independently verified.
Team Bharatshakti
(With inputs from Reuters)
