Russia has said that its forces had retaken Klishchiivka, one of a handful of villages on the eastern front that Ukraine claimed back in a 2023 counteroffensive.
Russia’s forces have in recent weeks made their biggest territorial gains in the war-battered east in the last 18 months as Ukraine waits for desperately-needed US and European weapon supplies.
Klishchiivka lies in the industrial Donetsk territory that the Kremlin claimed to have annexed in late 2022 even as its forces were struggling to gain ground there and at a great cost.
The Ukrainian army has come under intense pressure in the past two weeks, fighting off a fresh ground offensive in the Kharkiv region and further stretching critically short supplies of soldiers and ammunition.
“Units of the Southern grouping of troops liberated the village of Klishchiivka” in the eastern Donetsk region, the Russian defence ministry said.
Russian troops originally captured Klishchiivka in January 2023, but Ukraine clawed it back in September at the end of its mostly unsuccessful counteroffensive.
Klishchiivka is just south of the destroyed frontline city of Bakhmut – now held by Russia – and had a population of about 500 people before the conflict.
Ukraine did not immediately comment but President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in an evening address yesterday that the frontline was “extremely difficult”.
Fatal attacks
Russia’s gains since launching its ground assault in Ukraine’s northeast has forced Kyiv’s already stretched army to rush in resources and troops from elsewhere.
A Russian drone attack killed a Ukrainian police officer who was evacuating civilians from the frontline village of Vovchansk, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said.
“The occupiers hit the evacuation vehicle with an FPV (first-person view) drone. The two officers in the car were on their way to rescue civilians,” Klymenko said in a post on Telegram.
On Monday Russia said it had captured the coveted Ukrainian stronghold of Bilogorivka, paving the way for it to fully control the eastern Lugansk region.
Klishchiivka’s capture came as Ukrainian officials said Russian forces had attacked the city of Kharkiv – Ukraine’s second largest urban hub – with artillery.
“Ten civilians were injured in the shelling of Kharkiv,” the region’s governor Oleg Synegubov said on social media.
Meanwhile, Russia said Ukraine had launched fatal strikes on its border region of Belgorod and on the occupied eastern Ukraine city of Lysychansk.
Belgorod sits directly across the border from Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region where Russia launched its major ground assault on 10 May.
“Several air targets were shot down as they approached the village of Belenkoye. To our great sorrow, one civilian was killed,” Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
One civilian there was injured, and a Ukrainian aerial attack near the town of Shebekino, close to the border, wounded another, he said.
The Kremlin has said its new Kharkiv offensive is aimed at creating a “security zone” that would help it prevent future Ukrainian attacks on its border region.
Separately, Russian proxy officials said Ukraine had shelled Lysychansk in the eastern Lugansk region, leaving “one dead and two wounded”.
Lysychansk was captured by Russian forces in mid-2022 and lies close to the eastern front.
Meanwhile, a Russian airstrike on Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv destroyed a cafe, damaged a nearby residential building and set a petrol station ablaze, and local officials said 10 people were wounded, at least one severely.
“I’ve been left with nothing,” owner Vahe Ohandzhanian told Reuters in the ruins of his cafe, which had a large chunk torn out of it by the blast, scattering corrugated iron roof panels and bricks dozens of metres away.
A 12-storey high rise across the road had nearly all its windows blown out. About 50 metres away, a green trolleybus also had all its windows blown out and its rear side covered in a vast spatter of blood that pooled in a puddle on the asphalt.
Regional prosecutors said the trolleybus driver had both legs amputated. Russia had used a UMPB D-30 guided bomb launched from the bordering Belgorod region, prosecutors added on Telegram.
Three more people were hospitalised, according to regional governor Oleh Syniehubov.
Cost of rebuilding Ukraine ‘nearing a trillion dollars’
Former prime minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko believes the cost of rebuilding the country is approaching one trillion dollars – double the World Bank estimate of $500 billion.
Speaking at the Global Economic Summit in Killarney she said despite the blows and losses, the Ukrainian people continue to fight and are making progress.
“We have restored the maritime ‘grain corridor’ and are finding new logistics routes, restoring broken economic chains and overcoming the energy deficit, although 80% of thermal power generation has been destroyed, 30% of nuclear generation is out of service, hydroelectric power plants are under constant attack, Kakhovka HPP (hydroelectric power plant) is destroyed, Dnipro HPP is not working,” she said.
Ms Tymoshenko told the audience in Co Kerry that she has several Irish friends who have helped her in difficult times, including former taoiseach Enda Kenny, and Pat Cox, who was president of the European Parliament from 2002 to 2004.
She warned those who believed the war is far away and could never reach Ireland that “the war is next door”.
“And if all the countries of the free world would not do what is needed, the war will come here,” she said.
“War has many faces. Not only tanks, missiles and bombs.”
She said to win the war, Ukraine needed modern weapons, strong sanctions against Russia and unity.
Additional reporting Mícheál Lehane
