Ukraine launches offensive push in north of Donetsk region, senior commander says

KYIV, Sept 15 - Ukrainian forces have launched an offensive operation in the north of the eastern Donetsk region, the focal point of intense battles during more than four years of the war, a senior military commander said on Tuesday.

The third army corps had cleared an area of 75 square kilometres (29 square miles) of Russian infiltration groups and recaptured a further 10 sq km, said Brigadier-General Andrii Biletskyi, who has commanded Ukraine's defence in the vicinity since last month.

Biletskyi said that the area was in the north of the key strongholds in the region — the so-called "fortress belt" of cities Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the capture of which would bring Russia closer to its goal of seizing the entire region.

"The third army corps has started offensive operation at this direction. The operation is called 'Vivaldi'," Biletskyi said in a video uploaded on the Telegram app.

Biletskyi said that his troops disrupted Russian military logistics, cleared three villages and an area around a fourth. A village called Serednie was fully under Ukrainian control.

The Donetsk region has seen most of the fiercest battles of the war. Russia wants to control all of it, Moscow's main territorial demand at negotiations that have so far stalled but which the U.S. wants to restart, with envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff visiting Moscow and Kyiv this month.

Russia's total advances had slowed this year but its forces have been bearing down on the cities from the south and infiltrating deeper into the eastern city of Kostiantynivka.

Reuters was not able to verify Biletskyi's assertions. Independently determining lines of territorial control in Ukraine is difficult because of drone warfare that has created a wide no-man's land "kill zone" along the front.

The reported gains in the Donetsk region would add to Ukraine's push earlier this year in the southeast, where Kyiv said it clawed back more than 700 sq km of territory during a months-long counterattack. REUTERS