Ukrainian combat units are reported to have retaken the village of Hladosove in no-man’s land near the Russian-occupied Donetsk Oblast city of Horlivka, some 590 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
According to Russian-led forces in occupied Donetsk, Ukrainian troops belonging to the 54th Mechanized Brigade and the Aidar 24th Assault Battalion entered the small village in the early hours of Nov. 22. The soldiers ordered civilians to stay inside their houses, set up mortar positions, and started laying mines on the edge of the settlement, Russian-led forces claimed on a news website on the evening of Nov. 22.
Prior to that, Hladosove was inside the “gray zone” between the two front lines, and not controlled by either side. Russian-led forces accused the Ukrainian army of violating the Minsk agreements signed on Sept. 5, 2014 and reconfirmed on Feb. 14, 2015.
Reports by Russian-controlled media are unreliable, and independent media are not permitted to report from the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.
However, on Nov. 22, Yuriy Mysyagin, a civilian volunteer who provides aid to the Ukrainian forces deployed in the region, also claimed that Ukrainian forces had recently made advances in the combat zone – near the so-called Svitlodarsk Bulge, a salient stretching into the Russian-occupied territory.
According to the volunteer, the 54th Brigade and Aidar decided to advance due to the repeated attacks by the enemy with 82- and 120-millimeter mortars, as well as by 122-millimeter artillery and Grad multiple launch rocket systems.
The army liberated “several towns” and took “several strategically important high points,” Mysyagin wrote on Facebook.
“As a result of the action, we gained a new operating site several square kilometers in the area into which we have dug in successfully,” he wrote.
Neither side reported any casualties among soldiers or local civilians.
In response to the reports of recent army advances, Ukraine’s military press center on the morning of Nov. 23 issued a statement on its Facebook page saying that Ukrainian forces strictly observe the Minsk agreements, “according to which they are entitled to … redeploy within territories indicated by the agreements.”
“Some Ukrainian armed forces units deployed in the Luhansk area have improved their tactical situation to facilitate observation of the enemy and to deliver defensive fire in response to provocative shelling by Russian occupation troops,” the statement read.
As of noon on Nov. 23, two Ukrainian soldiers had been reported wounded in overnight fighting at other hotspots on the Donbas frontline and another one suffered a non-combat injury, according to the latest communique from army command.
Later in the day, three more servicemen operating a combat engineer vehicle were wounded after tripping an unknown explosive device near the town of Taramchuk, Ministry of Defense spokesman Oleksander Motuzyanyk said on Nov. 23.
