\n Russian troops launched multiple attacks to the west of recently captured Avdiivka in a bid to force more gains on the battlefield, a Ukrainian army spokesperson said Sunday.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kyiv also announced it had opened a war crimes investigation after two separate reports of Russian troops shooting captured Ukrainian soldiers emerged.\n<\/p>\n
\n Facing manpower and ammunition shortages, Ukraine was forced to withdraw from the industrial hub in the eastern Donetsk region, handing Moscow its first major territorial gain since May 2023.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The enemy is trying to actively develop its offensive,\" Dmytro Lykhoviy, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian army commander leading Kyiv's troops in the area, said on state TV on Sunday.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ukraine's general staff reported 14 failed Russian attacks on the village of Lastochkyne, around two kilometres (one mile) to the west of Avdiivka's northern edge.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"But our considerable forces are entrenched there,\" Lykhoviy said.\n<\/p>\n
\n He also reported failed Russian attacks near the villages of Robotyne and Verbove in the southern Zaporizhzhia region -- one of the few places where Ukraine managed to regain ground during last year's counter-offensive.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said it would be \"very difficult\" for Russia to break through there, given heavy Ukrainian defensive lines and natural conditions of the terrain.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The situation in the Zaporizhzhia sector is stable... No positions have been lost,\" he said Sunday on state TV.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The enemy was kicked in the teeth and retreated,\" he added.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Important victory' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday hailed the capture of Avdiivka as an \"important victory\" for his troops, just days ahead of the second anniversary of the invasion.\n<\/p>\n
\n The battle for Avdiivka was one of the bloodiest of the two-year war, drawing comparisons with Russia's assault on Bakhmut, which it captured last May at the cost of tens of thousands of soldiers.\n<\/p>\n
\n Avdiivka had symbolic importance to both Kyiv and Moscow -- seen as a marker of Ukrainian resistance after it briefly fell to Russian-backed separatists in 2014.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the decision to withdraw was taken to save as many lives as possible among his troops.\n<\/p>\n
\n Russia's capture of the town has raised fears its forces could now try to advance further into the Donetsk region, which it claims to have annexed.\n<\/p>\n
\n In the village of Novooleksandrivka some 30 kilometres west, local Vadym told AFP that, for now, he was staying put with his wife and child, born one week ago.\n<\/p>\n
\n The 22-year-old said shelling by the advancing Russian forces was \"constant\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Around 200 people remain, but the attacks had not yet pushed him to leave with his family.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I hope it will stop. And if it doesn't stop, we will try to leave.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Kyiv's newly installed commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky vowed Sunday his forces would \"eventually return to our Ukrainian Avdiivka\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Concerns are growing in Kyiv and the West over Ukraine's ability to thwart a renewed Russian offensive without unlocking a stalled $60-billion US aid package.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'War crimes' probe -\n<\/p>\n
\n Ukraine's Prosecutor General said Sunday it had opened an investigation after the army posted footage of what it said was a Russian soldier shooting two Ukrainian soldiers at point-blank range.\n<\/p>\n
\n The prosecutor's office said it was investigating possible war crimes based on the footage and said the incident happened near the village of Vesele in Ukraine's Donetsk region.\n<\/p>\n
\n AFP could not verify the authenticity of the video, its location or when it was shot.\n<\/p>\n
\n Prosecutors also announced a separate investigation into reports of the alleged execution of six wounded Ukrainian soldiers left behind during Kyiv's withdrawal from Avdiivka.\n<\/p>\n
\n There was no response from Russia to the allegations.\n<\/p>\n
\n The army has already said some Ukrainian soldiers were captured during the hasty retreat.\n<\/p>\n
\n Moscow and Kyiv have several times accused each other of violating international humanitarian law by killing prisoners of war since Russia invaded.\n<\/p>\n
\n The United Nations has documented cases of summary executions of captured Ukrainian soldiers as well as torture during the two-year war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russian troops launched multiple attacks to the west of recently captured Avdiivka in a bid to force more gains on the battlefield, a Ukrainian army spokesperson said Sunday. Kyiv also announced it had opened a war crimes investigation after two separate reports of Russian troops shooting captured Ukrainian soldiers emerged. Facing manpower and ammunition shortages, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-128581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n