Ukrainian forces appear to have edged closer to recapturing the key-Russian controlled city of Kreminna in Luhansk province as heavy fighting continued in the east and south of the country.
The regional governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, said fighters in part of the city controlled by Russian command were forced to retreat to Rubizhne, a town a few miles to the south-east, as a result of Ukrainian military pressure.
“The Russians understand that if they lose Kreminna, their entire line of defence will fall,” Haidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday. “The Russian occupation troops managed to build a very powerful defence in a month, even a little more. They are bringing there a huge amount of reserves and equipment. They are constantly renewing their forces.”
The Guardian could not independently confirm the battlefield developments.
Recapturing Kreminna and nearby Svatove could open the way for Kyiv to launch an offensive on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, two cities Ukraine lost in the summer.
The fierce fighting continues amid no sign of imminent peace talks.
Late on Monday Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Kyiv must accept Moscow’s demands of “demilitarisation and denazification” or suffer defeat on the battlefield.
Lavrov’s statements show the Kremlin has no intention of climbing down from its maximalist goals of regime change in Ukraine, despite Vladimir Putin’s claims on Sunday that Russia was ready for talks to end the war.
In its daily military briefing on Tuesday, Britain’s defence ministry said Russian troops continued to focus their efforts on capturing the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.
Russian soldiers, alongside fighters from the Wagner private military group, have been trying to seize Bakhmut since July, after reaching the outskirts of the city.
Bakhmut has been largely ravaged after nearly five months of fighting and has been referred to by both sides as the “Bakhmut meat-grinder”.
The battle for Bakhmut is seen as an important test for the Wagner head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is believed to have recruited thousands of Russian convicts to help storm the city. Prigozhin has previously criticised the Russian defence ministry for its performance in Ukraine and has lauded Wagner as the country’s most capable fighting force.
In a video published on Monday and purportedly filmed near Bakhmut that will further fuel speculations over tensions within the Russian forces, two apparent Wagner soldiers are seen insulting the chief of general staff, Valery Gerasimov.
“You are … the damn devil. We have nothing to fight with, we have no shells,” one of the men is heard saying.
The Guardian could not independently verify the footage, but when asked about the video by Russian journalists, Prigozhin appeared to express his approval for the actions of the soldiers, saying he travelled to Bakhmut to meet them.
“The guys asked me to convey that when you sit in a warm office, the problems of the frontline are hard to hear,” Prigozhin said in a statement, in an apparent dig at the country’s top military command.
Last Thursday, Ukraine claimed Russia had “relocated” some of its aircraft away from the Engels airfield, which Moscow said was struck by a Ukrainian drone a day earlier, resulting in the death of three Russian servicemen.
“After yesterday’s well-known events, we see that the planes are dispersed there, namely strategic aviation … Of course, a certain number of aircraft still remain there, but many of them have already been relocated to various airfields,” Col Yuriy Ignat, the chief spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force Command, told Ukrainian media.
Elsewhere, Russia’s security services claimed they had “liquidated” four Ukrainian soldiers who were on a reconnaissance mission in Russia’s southern Bryansk region, near Ukraine’s border. If confirmed, the incident sheds light on the ongoing activities of Ukrainian saboteurs inside Russian territory.
Since the start of the war, a number of military targets, including oil and weapon depots have been damaged after catching fire. Kyiv does not publicly admit to attacks inside Russia but has previously cheered such incidents as payback.
Also on Tuesday, Putin concluded his two-day “informal summit” in St Petersburg with the heads of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a Moscow-led group consisting of former Soviet states, by gifting the eight leaders present gold rings.
The meeting came on the back of growing unease between the Russian president and the rest of the CIS bloc, as nations have sought to distance themselves from Moscow’s faltering war.