On Monday morning, Russia announced that it had repulsed Ukraine’s “large-scale” offensive in the Donbas, but Kyiv, which has signaled for months that a major counteroffensive is being prepared, has yet to confirm that it has launched an operation.

“On the morning of June 4, the enemy launched a large-scale attack on five sectors of the front in the south of the Donetsk region,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a Telegram message. “The enemy’s goal was to split our defenses in the most vulnerable, in his opinion, sector of the front,” he adds.

“The enemy did not achieve his goal, he failed,” the ministry stressed, accompanying the video post, which, as they say, shows how Ukrainian armored vehicles were attacked from the air and destroyed by Russian troops.

Always according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, at the time of the attack, the head of the country’s armed forces, Valery Gerasimov, was in the area.

In addition, the same source indicates that the Ukrainian army launched an offensive with six motorized infantry battalions and two armored divisions, and adds that Russian troops killed 250 Ukrainian troops, destroying 16 tanks and another armored vehicle in the process.

The Ukrainian authorities have not yet commented on this information.

Ukraine has been saying for months that it is preparing a major counterattack against Russian troops. In a video released on Sunday, the Ukrainian military asked soldiers to remain silent and stressed that there would be no announcement of the long-awaited counteroffensive.

In addition to the Ukrainian offensive in Donbas, fighting broke out between the Russian army and pro-Ukrainian Russian militants on Sunday in Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

“A group of saboteurs has arrived, fighting is underway in Novaya Tavolyanka,” Gladkov said in Telegram. “I hope they are all exterminated,” he added.

The governor of Belgorod also said that the attackers, whom he called Russian militants fighting on the side of Kyiv, took prisoners and offered to exchange them.

“sabotage group”

One such pro-Ukrainian group, the Freedom Legion for Russia, announced that it had handed over captured prisoners to the Ukrainian authorities, who regularly exchange prisoners with Russian troops.

This is the first time a Russian official has acknowledged that Russian fighters are being captured on Russian soil, after more than 15 months of fighting in Ukraine.

Then the Russian military said that they repelled an attempt to cross the border by a “sabotage group consisting of Ukrainian terrorists.”

“The enemy was hit by our artillery. It disintegrated and retreated,” the statement said.

The fighting around Novaya Tavolzhanka follows the infiltration of pro-Ukrainian groups into the Belgorod region last month, forcing Moscow to use its artillery and aircraft inside Russia.

Responsibility for the attack was taken by Russian nationalist organizations opposed to Moscow.

This week, Ukraine heavily shelled Russian border villages, forcing thousands to flee to Belgorod, a major city in the region of the same name.

Ukraine has never claimed responsibility for attacks on Russian soil, but Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhail Podolyak said on Sunday that the situation in the border areas “should be seen as the future of Russia.”

Source: RES-IPE