The Russian Defense Ministry released a video on Monday showing Russian soldiers moving freely through the southern part of the Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk and patrolling deserted streets surrounded by burned-out apartment buildings, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.
Russia has been pressing against Pokrovsk for more than a year, relying on flanking operations to encircle it and threaten supply lines. Russian maps show the city under Russian control, while Ukrainian troops in the neighboring town of Mirnograd are surrounded.
Ukrainian maps show Pokrovsk as a gray area in no-man's land, and Mirnograd is not completely surrounded.
Moscow says that capturing Pokrovsk, which Russian media calls the "gateway to Donetsk," will provide it with a bridgehead from which to advance north toward the two largest cities in Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control - Kramatorsk and Slavyansk.
Video footage, which Reuters has confirmed was filmed in the southern part of Pokrovsk, shows Russian soldiers calmly walking through empty streets, one of them pushing a stretcher on wheels. The footage does not show them being subjected to any shelling.
Broken windows and doors hang from half-destroyed buildings. Birch branches are broken by bombs. Even pedestrian signs are battered and distorted. No civilians are visible.
Both Russia and Ukraine do not release their death tolls, but US estimates put the death toll at 1.2 million, making the war the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II, Reuters reported.