Ukraine’s military says it has struck and damaged a long-serving Russian rescue vessel in Sevastopol, the headquarters in occupied Crimea of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, while Russian forces say they have taken control of the settlement of Bohdanivka.
Ukrainian navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk said the Russian vessel Kommuna had been hit in Sevastopol Bay on Sunday morning and it was “clear that the ship is no longer in a state to carry out assignments”.
A post on the Ukrainian Armed Forces Telegram channel said the ship was one of the oldest operated by the Russian navy and had been launched in 1913.
News reports said the vessel had been dispatched as part of a rescue operation when Ukrainian forces sank the Russian Fleet’s Moskva flagship in April 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has pointed to the military’s success in attacking and containing Russia’s Crimea-based fleet in the nearly 26-month-old war against Russia.
Crimea was seized and annexed by Russia in 2014.
Pletenchuk said earlier this month that Ukrainian operations had taken out of action about a third of the Russian fleet since the start of the war.
Sevastopol’s Russia-installed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said earlier that Russian forces had repelled an anti-ship missile attack on one of its vessels in the port.
Razvozhayev said fallen fragments caused a small fire, which was promptly extinguished.
Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement on Sunday that its forces had taken control of Bohdanivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
Control of Bohdanivka, located just to the west of the city of the Russian-held city of Bakhmut, has been in doubt for some time.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, in its Sunday evening report, mentioned Bohdanivka as one of a series of villages where it said Ukrainian forces repelled 13 enemy attacks but it gave no specific details.
Ukraine’s Defence Ministry denied last week that Russia had captured all of Bohdanivka while acknowledging it had lost some positions in the village in eastern Donetsk region.
Unofficial Ukrainian sources have suggested Bohdanivka is in Russian hands, based on video footage of the village and the town of Chasiv Yar to the southwest.
Ukraine has focused attention on defending Chasiv Yar, describing it as an important post in keeping the Russian forces from advancing westward through Donetsk region to the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Maksym Zhorin, a commander on the frontline in the area, told a television broadcast on Sunday that all positions around Chasiv Yar were under full Ukrainian control.
Bakhmut was captured by Russian troops in May 2023 after months of fierce fighting that levelled what was once a city of about 70,000.
Zelenskiy on Sunday welcomed the passage of $US60 billion ($A94 billion) in aid for Ukraine by the US House of Representatives but urged politicians in Washington DC to quickly turn the bill into law and proceed with the actual transfer of weapons, saying long-range arms and air defence systems were top priorities.
In an interview with NBC, Zelenskiy said the passage of the bill would send a powerful message to Russia that the US stands by Ukraine and that it would not be “a second Afghanistan”.
“I think this support will really strengthen the armed forces of Ukraine and we will have a chance for victory,” Zelenskiy said through an interpreter.
During the interview he repeatedly urged US lawmakers to take swift action to pass the bill in the Senate.
He said Ukraine urgently needed US long-range weapons including ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) and air defence systems to turn around its fortunes on the battlefield.
“This is crucial. These are the priorities now,” Zelenskiy said.
