Russian troops would be able to advance 1.5 km deep in a section of the front line near Loshman in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Russia’s defense minister said on Tuesday, AFP reported.

After repulsing the offensive of Ukrainian troops, “Russian units launched a counterattack, advancing to a depth of 1.5 kilometers along a two-kilometer front line” near the city of Lyman, which was recaptured by the Ukrainian army in October 2022, Serhii Shoigu said on television.

Last week, Ukrainian forces reported Russian attacks around Lyman, a major railway junction about fifty kilometers northeast of Kramatorsk, the main Ukrainian-controlled city in the east of the country.

Serhii Shoigu added that Ukrainian troops continue to “try to break through our defenses in various directions”, saying that there have been “waves of shelling” over the past two days.

But since the beginning of the Ukrainian counteroffensive at the beginning of June, “the enemy has not achieved its goals in any area,” the defense minister continued.

During the same briefing, Shoigu stated that “if the US supplies Ukraine with cluster munitions, the Russian armed forces will be forced to use similar means of destruction (…) in response”, believing that this “will naturally have an effect”. , prolonging the conflict”.

In his opinion, Russian cluster munitions are “much more effective than American ones.”

Since the beginning of the conflict, the Ukrainian military has accused the Russian military of using controversial ammunition, which Washington announced last week would soon be delivered to Kyiv.