"We
are ready to continue fighting to liberate our territory even
with our bare hands," Brigadier-General Oleksii Hromov told a
media briefing.
He confirmed that in the early stages of the offensive, which
Ukraine said had begun last week, seven settlements had been
liberated in the eastern region of Donetsk and in the southern
region of Zaporizhzhia.
The army has advanced by to 3 km (1.8 miles) near the village of
Mala Tokmachka in the Zaporizhzhia sector and by up to 7 km near
a village south of Velyka Novosilka in the Donetsk sector,
military officials said.
Reuters could not verify the battlefield situation.
Russia, which began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in
February 2022, has not officially acknowledged the Ukrainian
advances. Each side says the other has suffered heavy losses
since the counteroffensive started, and Moscow and Kyiv rarely
comment on their own losses.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Writing by Anna Pruchnicka,
Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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