The Russian Defense Ministry reports that two villages along the front line in Ukraine have been captured. It concerns the village of Andrijivka in the Luhansk region and Pisjtjane in the Kharkiv region.
The two villages are less than two miles from each other in a part of the front line where Russia has made slow progress in recent weeks.
Andrijivka, a village with fewer than 20 inhabitants, was one of the last villages in the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine still controlled by Kiev, and has been an important target for Moscow. Russia claims to have captured a number of villages, many of them consisting of only a few streets and abandoned buildings, in recent weeks.