Russia says it takes two more Ukrainian villages, struck energy targets overnight

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian forces captured two more frontline villages in southeast Ukraine and also reported the capture of an island in southern Ukraine, its Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.

Ukraine's military also reported success near the town of Dobropillia, an area in the Donetsk region, the heart of the front line, where officials say Kyiv's forces are making headway in a counter-offensive.

Russian forces have been engaged in a long, grinding westward advance along and near the front line in eastern Ukraine, announcing the capture of new villages on nearly a daily basis. Its troops hold about 19% of Ukrainian territory.

The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces now controlled Pavlivka in Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast, one of four regions it now claims as Russian territory, and Ivanivka, just inside Dnipropetrovsk region, where they have established a foothold.

The ministry also said, in a statement on Telegram, that it struck Ukrainian energy infrastructure in what it said was a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian targets.

Ukrainian authorities earlier said that six people had been killed in Russian strikes overnight.

Reuters could not independently verify battlefield accounts from either side.

Russian news agencies early on Thursday quoted the Defence Ministry as saying paratroops and other servicemen had pushed their way across the Dnipro River to take control of Karantynnyi Island, close to the city of Kherson in the south.

Ukraine's military last week said Russian forces had unsuccessfully tried to land on the island.

Kherson was occupied by Russian troops in the early stages of their February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but Kyiv's forces took back the city and other parts of Kherson region later that year.

Near Dobropillia, in Donetsk, Ukraine's 132nd separate battalion of airborne forces said it had taken control of the village of Kucheriv Yar from Russian forces.

(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Felix Light and Ron Popeski; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Christian Schmollinger)