Kyiv: On Friday, Russia claimed that Ukrainian forces had attacked its positions along a front line that was almost 100 km (60 miles) long near Soledar, a small mining town in eastern Ukraine that Moscow's forces had taken control of in January.
Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar confirmed earlier reports that Ukraine had made some gains near Bakhmut, but she seemed to downplay suggestions of a wider push as anticipation for a Ukrainian counteroffensive aiming to drive Moscow's forces out of the land they have seized in the past 15 months grows.
According to the Russian Defence Ministry, 26 attacks near Soledar on Thursday involving more than a thousand soldiers and up to 40 tanks were repelled. Near a reservoir, northwest of Bakhmut, Russian forces had retreated to "more advantageous positions" in one area.
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The battlefield reports could not be independently verified by Reuters, and Kyiv did not immediately respond. In the past, when offensives were underway, Kyiv strictly observed silence.
According to reports from Russia's Wagner private army, Kyiv was launching its offensive on the city's north and south flanks with the intention of encircling it. An attack at Soledar, which is located just north of Bakhmut, would seem to corroborate these claims. In Ukraine's biggest advance in six months, a Ukrainian unit earlier this week claimed to have routed a Russian brigade southwest of Bakhmut.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner, has claimed that the regular troops' flanks are collapsing and endangering his group's positions inside the city. The Russian Ministry of Defence refuted this.
Maliar, the deputy defence minister of Ukraine, said this week saw a 2 km (mile) advance by Kiev forces around Bakhmut without giving up any ground. In an attritional battle where Russia has made small victories over the past 10 months without being able to take the city, a claim of such quick progress is uncommon.
She wrote, "This situation has actually been going on in the east for several months," which seemed to imply that this was not the beginning of the significant, long-awaited assault. That's all! Nothing else is occurring.
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Since last autumn, Moscow has been constructing lines of anti-tank fortifications along hundreds of miles of the front in anticipation of an expected onslaught.
In the partially occupied Ukrainian province of Zaporizhzhia, it has also started moving civilians who had been living close to the conflict zone to locations farther from the expected advance of Kiev's forces.
"We would go outside and observe the shelling. You could see the flashes as they launched, especially at night, according to Lyudmila, a 22-year-old from Kamianka-Dniprovska who is currently staying in temporary housing in the Russian-controlled Ukrainian port of Berdyansk.
"We've had shells land nearby, and when it landed, the entire sky was red," she said.
In remarks made public on Friday, the commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet said that in response to a wave of Ukrainian drone attacks against its home base, the Crimean port of Sevastopol, the fleet's defences were also being stepped up.
Although he cautioned that "our path ahead is not easy," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that his country was "much stronger now than last year or in any other year of this war for freedom and independence of our country."
In preparation for the offensive, Western nations have sent Ukraine hundreds of modern tanks and armoured vehicles as well as thousands of its soldiers for training.
One of the last major Western taboos regarding weapons that were previously thought to carry a high risk of provoking Russia was broken on Thursday when Kyiv was able to secure a promise from Britain of long-range cruise missiles. In the past, when Britain announced new weaponry, other allies quickly followed suit.
For its part, Russia has attempted to avoid Western sanctions in order to purchase weapons, such as drones from Iran, whenever possible. States have been warned by Washington that sanctions may be imposed if they lend material support to Russia's invasion.
After the US ambassador claimed that a Russian ship had picked up weapons there in December, a minister in charge of arms control in South Africa, which claims to be neutral, stated that the government had not authorised any shipments of weapons to Russia late last year. Cyril Ramaphosa, the president, has declared an investigation.
While a deal mediated by Turkiye and the UN last July safely reopened some Black Sea grain shipment channels, talks to extend it have stalled due to the conflict between two major farm exporters.
On May 18, Russia has threatened to pull out of the agreement. The Kremlin claimed there was nothing new to report, but the Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar claimed parties to the pact were close to agreeing on a deal to extend it.
