The Ukrainian armed forces have launched an offensive across the whole line of contact, the Russian Defence Ministry announced.
“The Ukrainian forces yesterday conducted offensive actions along the whole line of military contact (more than 95 km) on the Soledar axis,” RIA Novosti quotes the ministry as saying.
The defence agency claims that Ukrainian forces carried out more than 26 attacks that involved more than 1,000 service members and up to 40 attacks. The ministry, however, stresses that all the attacks were repelled.
“The Russian defences were not breached,” the statement reads.
Earlier, Russian military bloggers reported that Ukraine had begun its long-awaited counteroffensive. The Russian Defence Ministry rebutted this information.
In particular, the agency issued a statement to say that these reports “have nothing to do with the reality of the situation”.
The ministry claimed that no active combat operations were taking place on the Kupiansk, Lyman, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson directions, while Russian troops managed to “foil three enemy attempts to conduct reconnaissance in combat” on the Donetsk axis. At the same time, fighting continues for Bakhmut and Maloilinivka while the Russian military is trying to block Avdiivka and take Marinka, the press release said.
