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Ukrainian forces have made incremental gains in blood-stained Bakhmut, provoking a wave of revenge attacks from Vladimir Putin’s forces.
Deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said the Ukrainian military managed to retake nearly two square miles during the past week around the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut.
“So long as a peace treaty has not been signed and such a treaty has not been ratified by the parliaments of the two countries, of course, a (new) war (with Azerbaijan) is very likely,” Pashinyan was quoted as saying.
Pashinyan presided over an Armenian defeat in 2020 in a war over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, during which Armenian-backed separatists lost large amounts of territory in and around the enclave.
A rebellious mercenary commander said Saturday he ordered his mercenaries to halt their march on Moscow and retreat to field camps in Ukraine, appearing to defuse a dramatically escalating crisis that represented the most significant challenge to President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power.
Moscow had braced for the arrival of forces from the Wagner Group, a private army led by Yevgeny Prigozhin that has been fighting alongside regular Russian troops in Ukraine, by erecting checkpoints with armored vehicles and troops on the city’s southern edge. Red Square was shut down, and the mayor urged motorists to stay off some roads.
Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin announced early on Saturday that his forces had taken control of Russia’s army headquarters in the city of Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people where Russia has based one of its outposts overseeing military operations in Ukraine.
Prigozhin demanded that Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and armed forces Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov come meet him in Rostov, a city near the Ukrainian border.
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Ukrainian troops have retaken seven villages spanning 90 square kilometers (35 square miles) from Russian forces in the past week, the deputy defense minister said Monday as the early stages of Kyiv’s counteroffensive notched small successes.
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar wrote on the Telegram app that the Ukrainian flag was again flying over the village of Storozhov, in the eastern Donetsk province, and that her troops had also retaken three other nearby small villages and three in neighboring Zaporizhzhia province.