Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on October 23, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Russian forces captured villages and struck energy targets in Ukraine, escalating the conflict. Ukraine reports successes near Dobropillia.
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)
Energy infrastructure refers to the facilities and systems that generate, transmit, and distribute energy, including power plants, transmission lines, and distribution networks.
Military verification involves confirming the accuracy of military claims and activities, often through independent observation or intelligence assessments.
A counter-offensive is a military strategy where forces launch an attack against an enemy that has previously gained ground, aiming to reclaim lost territory.
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