Ukrainian soldiers in front of a building with Ukraine’s national flag in the liberated village of Blahodatne in the southwestern Donetsk region, June 11, 2023
Saturday’s Coverage: Counter-Offensive’s “Tactical Successes” in South
Map: Institute for Study of War
UPDATE 1218 GMT:
Hosting a delegation of African leaders in a St. Petersburg suburb, Vladimir Putin has brushed away their proposal for a political resolution of invasion.
Putin responded to the call for a ceasefire, “confidence building measures”, and negotiations with the falsehoods that Ukraine and its western allies started the conflict and that Kyiv had blocked talks.
He said that any proposal must allow for the “new realities” of his annexation of five Ukrainian provinces — Luhansk and Donetsk in the east and Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea in the south.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa insisted that the fighting had to stop: “This war must be settled…through negotiations and through diplomatic means.
UPDATE 1147 GMT:
The official death toll from flooding in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, caused by the June 6 demolition of the Nova Kakhovka Dam, has risen to 16 in Ukrainian-held areas and 29 in Russian-occupied territory.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said another 31 people are missing and about 1,300 houses remain flooded. More than 3,600 people have been evacuated from the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions.
A New York Times investigation has reinforced the assessment of a team of international legal experts, assisting Ukraine’s prosecutors, that it was “highly likely” that Russian forces planted explosives to destroy the Nova Kakhovka Dam.
The investigation established that the probable location of the blast, between 2:35 a.m. and 2:54 a.m., was a small passageway in the concrete base of the dam.
UPDATE 1123 GMT:
Marking Father’s Day, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has posted:
Thank you to every Ukrainian father, every Ukrainian family for our strong and brave warriors who have defended Ukraine’s independence and are fighting for life for Ukraine!
I wish for our fathers to live long and healthy lives. And for every father who is on the front line to come home.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Ukraine’s counter-offensive against the 16-month Russian invasion has liberated another village in the south of the country.
Russian military observers reported on Sunday that Moscow’s troops abandoned Piatykhatky on the front in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Russian proxy official Vladimir Rogov confirmed, “The enemy’s ‘wave-like’ offensives yielded results, despite enormous losses.”
The village is the eighth to be retaken by Ukranian forces in the past week. The Russian observers point to the potential of more, with Ukraine concentrating reserves of infantry and heavy armored vehicles for a potential major assault.
Piatykhatky is west of Orikhiv and northwest of Tokmak, key hubs for Russia’s occupation of Zaporizhzhia. Their loss would open the way for Ukrainian forces to advance on the port city of Melitopol.
Ukrainian forces also destroyed a “very significant” ammunition depot in the Russian-occupied area of the Kherson region.
Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa military administration, said the operation was near the port city of Henichesk.
“Our armed forces dealt a good blow in the morning – and a very loud one – in the village of Rykove,” he said in a video messge.
Ukrainian media posted videos of a large plume of smoke on the horizon with sounds of blasts and flying projectiles.
