Russia claims to have captured two villages in eastern Ukraine where its forces have been advancing steadily for months, with the Ukrainian president urging allies to hand over all weapons they promised to send to Kiev.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that soldiers took control of the village of Yantarn in the eastern Donetsk region, about 10 kilometers (six miles) southwest of Kurakhov, a key logistics hub that Moscow announced it had captured last week — a day after the Russian military made the announcement. It also captured new lands northwest of Kurakhov.

The Defense Ministry added that soldiers also took control of the village of Kalinov in the Kharkiv region in the northeast of the country.

The village is located on the western bank of the Euskil River, which for a long time formed the front line between the two armies in the region.

Agence France-Presse quoted a Ukrainian official as saying on Thursday that Russian forces were able to establish a bridgehead on the West Bank after crossing the river.

The Russian army has spent months trying to cross the river, which also passes through Kobyansk, a city that Ukraine recaptured in its 2022 counterattack.

Separately, the Russian Defense Ministry said that over the past 24 hours, Russian forces carried out strikes on Ukrainian military airfields, personnel and vehicles in 139 locations using air forces, drones, missiles and artillery.

Ukrainian air defenses shot down 60 of 94 drones launched by Russia overnight, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.

It said 34 drones were “lost,” referring to Ukraine’s use of electronic warfare to redirect Russian drones.

The air force said falling drone fragments damaged homes in the Kharkiv, Sumy and Poltava regions, but no one was injured.

In the southern Kherson region, three people were injured by drones on Sunday, regional authorities said, and about 23,000 families were left without electricity after Russian bombing damaged power equipment in the city.

The attack targeted the Dniprovsky district along the Dnipro River, an area in Kherson that is subject to regular bombardment from Russian forces on the opposite bank.

Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said that the city of Kherson and about 50 settlements in the surrounding area were bombed by Russian forces in the past 24 hours.

“The Russian army bombed social infrastructure and residential areas in the region’s settlements, in particular, causing damage to two multi-storey buildings and eight private homes,” Prokudin said on Telegram.

In the Russian-controlled part of the Kherson region, a Ukrainian drone attacked a car, killing a 76-year-old woman outside her home, Russia-appointed governor Vladimir Saldo said on the Telegram app.

Zelensky appeals to allies

In a statement on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the allies to fulfill all promises to supply Ukraine with weapons, including those intended to confront Russian air attacks.

Zelensky said that over the past week, Russian forces launched hundreds of attacks on Ukraine and used nearly 700 aerial bombs and more than 600 attack drones.

“Every week, the Russian war continues only because the Russian army maintains its ability to terrorize Ukraine and exploit its superiority in the sky,” Zelensky said via the messaging app Telegram.

“The decisions taken at the NATO summit in Washington, as well as those adopted during the Ramstein meetings on Ukraine’s air defenses, have not yet been fully implemented,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian president said this week that he discussed with partners and the United States the possibility of granting Ukraine licenses to produce air defense systems and missiles.

Oil Spill Task Force

Meanwhile, Russian officials said an emergency task force arrived in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region on Sunday, as an oil spill in the Kerch Strait from two tankers hit by the storm continued to spread a month after it was first discovered.

The task force, which includes Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Korenkov, was formed after Russian President Vladimir Putin called on authorities on Friday to step up the response to the spill, describing it as “one of the most serious environmental challenges we have faced in recent years.” “.

Korenkov said the “most difficult situation” developed near the port of Taman in the Krasnodar region, where fuel oil continues to leak into the sea from the damaged part of the tanker Volgunft-239.

The official Russian RIA Novosti news agency quoted Korenkov as saying that the remaining oil will be pumped from the stern of the tanker.

In response to Putin’s call for action, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hiorhii Tykhi accused Russia of “beginning to show its alleged ‘concern’ only after the scale of the disaster became so clear that its terrible consequences could no longer be hidden.”

“Russia’s practice of first ignoring the problem, then admitting its inability to solve it, and then leaving the entire Black Sea region alone with the consequences is further evidence of its international irresponsibility,” Tikhi said on Friday.

The Kerch Strait is an important global shipping route, providing passage from the inland Sea of ​​Azov to the Black Sea. It was also a major point of conflict between Russia and Ukraine after Moscow annexed the peninsula in 2014.

In 2016, Ukraine filed a lawsuit against Moscow before the Permanent Court of Arbitration, accusing Russia of trying to illegally control the region. In 2021, Russia closed the strait for several months.

Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to Zelensky’s office, described last month’s oil spill as a “large-scale environmental disaster” and called for additional sanctions on Russian tankers.