MOSCOW: Russia said on Sunday its armed forces had seized the village of Ocheretyne in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, the latest in a string of small territorial gains for Moscow.
After capturing the nearby industrial hub of Avdiivka in February, Russia has pressed its manpower and weapons advantage on the battlefield, advancing several kilometres deeper into Ukraine in places.
The defence ministry said Russian troops had "completely liberated the village of Ocheretyne in the Donetsk People's Republic". Ocheretyne is around 15 kilometres northwest of Avdiivka.
Ukraine's commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said last week that Kyiv had pulled back from three villages in the eastern Donetsk region and was building a new line of fortifications.
Kyiv has struggled amid delays to vital Western weapons supplies in recent months and hopes the arrival of US arms will help it stabilise the front lines.
Meanwhile, a Russian rocket strike on Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region killed two people and drone and bomb attacks on the northeastern city of Kharkiv injured at least a dozen, officials said on Sunday. The strikes came as Orthodox Christians in Ukraine and Russia celebrated Easter, and as Moscow said its forces had captured another village on the battlefield.
"In Pokrovsk, rocket attacks killed two people and damaged a house," Vadim Filashkin, Ukraine's governor of the Donetsk region, said in a post on Telegram.
Pokrovsk is around 60 kilometres northwest of Donetsk city, the Russian-held capital of the region which Moscow claims to have annexed.
Regional Governor Oleg Synegubov said Russia had used a guided aerial bomb in the strike. A separate overnight drone attack on the city also injured six, including a child born in 2015, Synegubov said earlier. Ukraine's air force said Russia fired 24 drones at its territory overnight, 23 of which were shot down.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky published a video message on Sunday from Kyiv's Saint Sophia Cathedral in the centre of the capital.
Wearing a traditional Ukrainian vyshyvanka shirt, instead of his typical army-style clothes, he said: "We believe that God has a chevron with the Ukrainian flag on his shoulder. Therefore, with such an ally, life will definitely defeat death."
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin did not explicitly mention the war -- that Russia calls a "special military operation" -- in his Easter message.
But in a public address to Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin thanked him for "fruitful cooperation in the current difficult period, when it is so important for us to unite our efforts for the steady development and strengthening of the Fatherland." — AFP
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