Intense fighting has been reported in Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhya region, with Defense Minister Hanna Malyar claiming "success" as Kyiv continues its counteroffensive to regain territory occupied by Russian forces.
Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine
RFE/RL's Ukraine Live Briefing gives you the latest developments on Russia's invasion, Western military aid, the plight of civilians, and territorial control maps. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.
Gains were reported on August 21 in the vicinity of the village of Robotyne, which sits along an important road leading from the town of Orikhiv to Tokmak on the way to the strategic city of Melitopol.
Malyar wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian troops, who in recent days reportedly made a breakthrough near Robotyne, "had success in the direction southeast of Robotyne and south of Malaya Tokmachka."
Malyar added that "planned combat work continues" in Robotyne itself.
The Kherson regional military administration reported that three civilians were injured in the region as a result of Russian shelling on the evening of August 21.
Two local residents -- a 79-year-old woman and a 60-year-old man -- were injured in the shelling of the town of Sofiyivka. Russians forces also attacked a residential building in Berislav, injuring a 48-year-old man in his home, the Kherson military administration said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said early on August 22 that the military jammed two Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea. The drones crashed into the water on August 21 at around 11 p.m. local time about 40 kilometers to the northwest of Crimea, the military said in a statement.
It was not possible for RFE/RL to independently verify the claims.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces claimed to have recaptured territory near Bakhmut, a city in the eastern Donetsk region that was battered by months of heavy fighting before it fell to Russian forces in May.
"Another three square kilometers have been liberated (around Bakhmut). In total, 43 square kilometers around Bakhmut have been liberated" since the counteroffensive began in June, Malyar told state television.
In the south, Malyar said, "our defenders continue to advance in the Berdyansk and Melitopol sectors."
Pro-Russian Telegram channels, meanwhile, reported fighting in the center of the Robotyne and gains by Russian forces near Kupyansk, in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region. Ukrainian officials recently advised residents living near the front in the Kharkiv region to evacuate.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in an August 21 statement that its forces were fending off Kyiv's counteroffensive near the village of Urozhayne, a village on the edge of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region that Kyiv's forces captured last week.
Ukrainian forces have struggled to break through formidable Russian defensive lines as their two-month-long counteroffensive continues, particularly in the southern Zaporizhzhya region and in the eastern Donetsk region.
While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed confidence while in Copenhagen on August 21 that his country would win the war with the West's provision of military aid, including the delivery of F-16 jet fighters, the lack of significant success has raised speculation that Kyiv could face mounting pressure to open negotiations with Moscow on ending the war launched by Russia in February 2022.