Donetsk (Ukraine): Moscow said its troops have taken control of Ukraine's second-largest power station near Svitlodarsk in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region.
Russia's RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday the capture of the Vuhlhirska power plant. While images purportedly showing Wagner Group mercenaries in front of the plant's administration building were shared by Russian separatist media, the Russian claim could not be independently verified, and other reports suggested that Fighting was still going on around the plant.
The Ukrainian General Staff did not mention the power plant in its status report on Tuesday evening, but did mention fighting near the village of Semhiriya.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian troops were able to thwart attacks along the front line in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, according to the General Staff.
The British Defense Ministry said in its daily Ukraine intelligence report early Wednesday that the Wagner group "succeeded in making strategic advances in the Donbass around the Vuhlhirska power plant and the nearby village of Novoluhanske."
"Some Ukrainian forces are likely to withdraw from the area," it said. The Wagner Group is a shadowy network of mercenaries widely regarded as the personal army of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Wagner has also been involved in Syrian conflicts and has sent mercenaries to the Central African Republic and Sudan.
As the war enters its sixth month, Russian forces are advancing from the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, occupying about a fifth of the country.
Russia has set its sights on large areas of southern Ukraine, where it occupied two areas north of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula, which it seceded from Ukraine in 2014.
They have faced retaliatory attacks from Ukraine, but largely held their ground. For the time being, Russia's main regional focus has been on the capture of Bakhmut, which the Russian army needs to suppress its eastern offensive on Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
The Institute for the Study of War stated that "the Russian army made modest gains south of Bakhmut but is unlikely to be able to effectively take advantage of these advances to take full control of Bakhmut."
On Tuesday, Moscow said its forces killed several dozen foreign fighters, most of them Poles, in an attack on an International Army of Ukraine unit near the Donetsk region town of Kostyantinivka. The International Army, which fights alongside the Ukrainian Army, rarely issues casualties and does not reveal the makeup of its volunteer unit.
According to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russian military losses have risen to nearly 40,000, with tens of thousands wounded or crippled. His claim was not independently verifiable. The Russian military reported its losses in March, stating that 1,351 soldiers were killed and 3,825 wounded in action.
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