Reuters reports that Russian forces have captured two settlements in eastern Ukraine.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian forces have taken control of two more settlements in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

According to the ministry’s statement, the Russian army is taking control of the village of Petropavlivka, located between the cities of Pokrovsk and Kurakhov, the focal point of the fighting in the area in recent months.

It also saw the capture of Vremyvka, one of a cluster of small towns in the south of the Donetsk region.

The ministry also said the Ukrainian military hit Ukrainian military facilities with high-precision weapons in response to an attack by US-made ATACMS missiles in Russia’s southern Belgorod area.

Reuters could not independently verify battlefield reports from either side of the 34-month conflict.

Ukrainian military statements did not mention any of the two villages changing hands, but indicated heavy fighting near the key town of Pokrovsk.

Ukraine’s popular Deep State blog, which uses open-source materials to document changes in positions held by both sides, has put both Petropavlivka and Vremyvka in Russian hands.

A Ukrainian military spokesman dismissed the suggestion that Khortytsya, or the Eastern Force Group, had entered Pokrovsk for a second day.

“There is no development in Pokrovsk, things are stable,” Viktor Trehubov told national television. “The enemy is not there.”

The city is a transportation hub and site of Ukraine’s only coal mine, which was shut down this week.

In the year In the weeks since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military has failed to advance on the capital, Kiev, and has attempted to capture all of Donbas, which consists of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

It now occupies 20% of the territory of Ukraine.

In its evening report, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army said that Russian forces had carried out 84 attacks in the Pokrovsk sector in an attempt to attack Ukrainian defenses. 14 battles are still fought in the area.

The report lists a series of villages in the sector that have come under Russian attack — including three that the Russian military said it secured last week, and another that Russia said it took control of last month.