Ukraine counter-offensive: Kyiv says it has liberated villages in Donetsk region

Ukraine says it has liberated four villages in the south-east of the country in the first victories of its much-anticipated counter-offensive.

Officials reported on Monday that "the national flag is once again waving" over Storozheve, in the Donetsk region.

Reports and footage from the weekend show similar scenes in the neighbouring settlements of Blahodatne and Neskuchne, as well as nearby Makarivka.

The villages are relatively small and Moscow is yet to confirm any retreat.

On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that the counter-offensive had begun.

These four settlements would be the first liberated since his comments, but not the first that Ukraine has recaptured since last Monday, when its forces began to advance in the country's south.

Moscow has yet to confirm the fall of any of the villages. It says Ukrainian assaults in the region have been repelled.

Elsewhere, Ukraine says Moscow has blown up another dam in a Russian-controlled part of the Zaporizhzhia region. It followed the destruction of the major Kakhovka dam a week ago, which caused flooding and mass evacuations.

On Sunday Valeriy Shershen, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military, said the destruction of the second dam near the village of Novodarivka had "led to the flooding on both banks of the Mokri Yaly river".

Mr Shershen said Russia was deliberately blowing up dams in the region to halt Ukraine's advance towards occupied areas.

Russia has denied it blew up the Kakhovka dam and has blamed Ukraine instead.

Footage on social media, shared by pro-Ukrainian accounts, showed troops raising the Ukrainian flag outside a burned out building in Blahodatne.

And the state border guard published videos showing Kyiv's forces announcing that "Neskuchne of the Donetsk region is under the Ukrainian flag again", before shouting the now standard battle cry of "Glory to Ukraine".

Meanwhile, Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar claimed in a Telegram video that Ukraine's forces had also taken the village of Makarivka.

While the capture of the four villages mark the biggest advances of recent days, the settlements are relatively small. Blahodatne had a pre-war population of just 1,000 residents.

The village, which has been the centre of intense fighting in recent days, sits on the road towards the city of Mariupol, and some analysts have suggested that Ukraine could seek to recapture the port city in the coming months.

Others have speculated that Kyiv wants to break the land bridge between occupied Crimea and Donetsk, isolating Russian troops on the peninsula.

Further east, Ukrainian troops are said to have advanced near the ruined city of Bakhmut, the scene of a bloody battle between Ukrainian forces and Russian troops.

On Monday, Ukrainian's General Staff said there had been 25 clashes over the past day.

Senior officials in Kyiv have refused to comment on the specifics of the advance.

Ukraine's head of intelligence Kyrylo Budanov released a video on Sunday repeating the catchphrase "plans love silence", which has symbolised the secrecy behind the counter-offensive.

The extent of Ukraine's operations remain unclear, but the US-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Saturday that Kyiv's forces were attacking in at least four front-line areas.

It also appeared to back up the claims being made by Kyiv, saying Ukraine had captured "multiple settlements" along the frontline over the weekend.

Ukraine has suffered some setbacks. A group of Ukrainian soldiers told AFP news agency that they had lost several new American-made Bradley fighting vehicles in an attack in the southeast of Zaporizhzhia province on Thursday.

Analysts have highlighted the difficulties Ukraine faces in trying to pierce lines that Russia has been fortifying for months.

But in other areas Kyiv's troops are said to have breached the front lines in mechanised attacks over the weekend, with German-made Leopard-2 tanks said to have been deployed.

Meanwhile in Russia's Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, rail traffic was suspended after a freight train derailed on Saturday night. Belgorod's border areas have been hit by drones, shelling and cross-border raids in the past weeks.

Further north, the governor of the Kaluga region, Vladislav Shapsha, said there had been two drone crashes - one near the village of Strelkovka and the other in a forest.

The BBC has not independently verified the incidents.

Additional reporting by Paul Adams.