Russia claims gains near battleground town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine

Russia has claimed to have won the village of Bohdanivka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province. The village is near to the key battleground town of Chasiv Yair.

“Units of the southern grouping of troops have completely liberated the settlement of Bohdanivka,” said the Russian Defence Ministry on Sunday.

The village is three kms from the Chasiv Yair town. Lately, the Ukrainian forces in the region have focused their attention to keep control of the town.

The village of Bohdanivka is also located just to the west of the city of Bakhmut, which witnessed some of the bloodiest fighting in the war. Last year, Russia took control of the city after a year of grinding of war of attrition that destroyed much of the city.

The Russian claim of victory at Bohdanivka comes a day after the US House of Representatives passed a $61 billion aid package to Ukraine. The passage of the package, which is yet to be passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden, came after months of delay that had reportedly caused battlefield reversals for the Ukrainians who had started to suffer shortages of armaments and ammunition in the war with Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had announced the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. While he had hoped that the Russian military will secure sweeping victories across Ukraine and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government in Kyiv will be replaced with a friendly regime within days, that did not turn out to be the case. Within weeks, Russia abandoned the goal to capture Kyiv and refocused war efforts on eastern Ukraine where the fighting is now in its third year.

The town of Chasiv Yar, which Ukraine is now defending in the region against Russia, had a pre-war population of around 13,000. Much of the town has been destroyed from the fighting and most of the residence have been forced to leave.

While Russia has claimed victory at Bohdanivka, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces in its Sunday evening report mentioned Bohdanivka as one of the villages where it said Ukrainian forces repelled 13 enemy attacks, but it not give any specifics, according to Reuters.

Last week, Ukraine’s Defence Ministry denied claims that Russia had captured the village but acknowledged that some parts of the village had come under Russian control, said the report.

The report further said that unofficial sources have suggested, based on the footage from the village and the town of Chasiv Yar, that the village was indeed in Russian hands.