Russia 'takes' Ukraine town while advancing on Pokrovsk

Russia's military says its forces have taken full control of a town in eastern Ukraine amid an advance on the strategically important city of Pokrovsk and a bid to pierce Ukrainian defensive front lines.

Russian forces, which control about a fifth of Ukraine since invading in February 2022, are advancing in eastern Ukraine in an attempt to take the whole of the Donbas.

Russia's defence ministry said its forces had taken the town of Novohrodivka, which lies 12km from Pokrovsk, an important rail and road hub for Ukrainian forces in the area.

The town had a population of 14,000 before the war.

Yuri Podolyaka, an influential Ukrainian-born pro-Russian military blogger, published maps showing Russian forces attacking beyond Novohrodivka in at least two places less than 7km from Pokrovsk.

Reuters was unable to immediately verify battlefield reports from either side due to restrictions on reporting in the war.

President Vladimir Putin said last week that a Ukrainian incursion into the Russian region of Kursk had failed to slow Russia's own advance in eastern Ukraine and had weakened Ukrainian defences along the front line.

Ukraine's top military commander said on Thursday that the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region was working and that there had been no Russian advances on Pokrovsk for the previous six days.

He said that one of the objectives of the Kursk incursion was to divert Russian forces from other areas, primarily Pokrovsk and Kurakhove.

Russia had diverted large numbers to Kursk but was also strengthening the Pokrovsk front, he added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the Kursk operation was also to prevent Russian forces from crossing the border in the opposite direction.

Russia currently controls about 80 per cent of Donbas.

Given the speed of recent Russian advances in the east, some Russian war bloggers have raised concern about the army overreaching itself.

Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 in what he calls a special military operation.

Ukraine and its foreign backers have vowed to defeat Russian forces and expel all Russian troops.

Russian shelling killed three women in a small village in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, governor Vadym Filashkin said.

Filashkin said Russian forces hit the village of Cherkaske with cluster munitions in the morning, killing the women, aged 43, 45, and 53, wounding a man, and damaging at least nine private houses and cars.

He urged residents to leave in a message on the Telegram messaging app.

Reuters was not able to verify the report independently.

Russian artillery, bombs and missiles have been hitting settlements in the Donetsk region for months.

Ukraine's military reported about 100 clashes in the Donetsk region over the past 24 hours in its daily frontline update.