Russia announces capture of strategic settlement in Donbass

Russian forces have established complete control over the strategic settlement of Peski in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Russia’s Defense Ministry has said.  

“As a result of the offensive by the allied forces [Russian troops and DPR militia] the settlement of Peski has been fully liberated” from the Ukrainian military, the ministry’s spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov announced during his daily briefing on Saturday.  

Peski, located some 2km away from the Donetsk Airport, has been one of the main pillars of Ukraine’s elaborate defense line in the DPR.  

The settlement had been heavily fortified since 2015. A DPR militia commander told Russia’s Channel One last week that the area had been turned into “literally one big garrison,” from which all civilians were evacuated long ago. All buildings in Peski are surrounded by trenches, while Ukrainian defenses had been set up in “according to NATO standards,” he pointed out.  

The joint operation to seize the settlement began in late July and saw intense fighting and artillery shelling. In early August, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky described the situation in Peski and nearby Avdeevka by saying that “it’s just hell there. It can’t even be described in words.”

Meanwhile, strikes against Kiev’s forces and military infrastructure continued in other parts of Ukraine over the past 24 hours, Konashenkov said.

Among other things, a HIMARS multiple rocket launcher and a warehouse that stored munitions for it, were destroyed near the town of Kramatorsk in the DPR, according to the spokesman.  

More than a hundred Ukrainian troops and members of the nationalist Right Sector group were also killed in a strike near the village of Starye Terny in the DPR, Konashenkov added.

Radicals from the Right Sector played a key role during the violent coup in Kiev in 2014 and subsequently took an active part in the fighting in Donbass over the next two years.