Ukraine claims liberation of front line villages

Ukrainian forces claimed on Sunday to have made minor territorial gains over Russia, with soldiers hoisting the country's blue and yellow flag over the newly liberated village of Blahodatne.

Ukraine's 68th brigade said in a statement that the small front line community in the largely Russian-occupied eastern Donetsk region was retaken and Russian soldiers captured as prisoners.

The troops released a video showing the raising of the Ukrainian flag on a half-destroyed building in Blahodatne.

The Donetsk villages of Neskuchne and Makariwka were also said by military officials to have been reclaimed.

There was no immediate comment from the Russian military. But Russian military bloggers close to the Kremlin wrote that Blahodatne was abandoned because Moscow's fighters feared encirclement.

The village of Lobkove in the Zaporizhzhya region was retaken by the Ukrainians as well, according to the bloggers with battlefield contacts.

The Ukrainian armed forces have been conducting large attacks in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhya regions for days in order to liberate their occupied territories.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday night confirmed that his country's fighters have started counter-attacks along the front with Russian forces, although he did not provide details.

Russian troops had withdrawn combat units from the Kherson region in order to reinforce contingents in other parts of the front, for example in the Zaporizhzhya region and in Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, said Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar in Kiev.

She said again that Russia had deliberately destroyed the Kakhovka dam on Tuesday in order to flood the Kherson region and make it impassable for the Ukrainian offensive. Russia claims that the Ukrainian armed forces destroyed the dam by firing missiles at it.

Kiev said on Sunday that Russian troops fired on a lifeboat evacuating civilians in the Kherson region.

"Russians are cowardly terrorists," said Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president's office, on Telegram. "They shot civilians in the back."

Yermak said the wounded had made it across the Dnipro river to the city of Kherson, which is held by Ukrainian forces.

The Dnipro separates Ukrainian-controlled parts of the region from southern areas under Russian occupation.

In the early hours of Tuesday, the dam on the river in the Russian-occupied town of Nova Kakhovka was destroyed. Huge amounts of water rushed out of the reservoir, totally flooding dozens of villages.

The warring sides have been accusing each other of shelling the flood zone for days, even as aid workers try to bring residents to safety.

The Ukrainian military governor of the area, Oleksandr Prokudin, said a 74-year-old man had suffered fatal gunshot wounds while trying to protect a woman with his body.

The Interior Ministry in Kiev said that there were 21 people on the boat who were trying to get to safety and published photos of those rescued.

Thousands of people have been brought to safety on both sides of the river. Thirty-five people are still considered missing in the Kherson region, including seven children, while dozens of people are being treated in hospital. The death toll stands at 14.

After dozens of villages were flooded, the waters are now receding. According to Prokudin, the flooded area has decreased from 139 to 77.8 square kilometres.

Meanwhile, Ukraine and Russia each released more than 90 men in a new prisoner exchange, officials on both sides said.

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners several times in the course of the 15-month war. Most recently, there was a major exchange of prisoners at the end of May.