<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">Russia has said its forces thwarted a major Ukrainian offensive in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk, killing 250 Ukrainian troops and destroying tanks and armoured vehicles.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">“On the morning of June 4, the enemy launched a large-scale offensive in five sectors of the front in the South Donetsk direction,” the Russian defence ministry said on its Telegram channel early on Monday.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There was no update from Ukraine on the alleged offensive. In its evening update on June 4, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Moscow was focusing its military efforts on the full occupation of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian territories that Russia annexed last September, along with Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“During the day, the occupiers made 23 attacks, but all of them were repulsed by units of the defence forces,” it said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was not possible to immediately verify the Russian or Ukrainian claims.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Russian defence ministry said Ukraine had launched the attack using six mechanised and two tank battalions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“The enemy’s goal was to break through our defences in the most vulnerable, in its opinion, sector of the front,” the defence ministry said. “The enemy did not achieve its tasks, it had no success.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ukraine has been preparing for a counteroffensive to take back territory occupied by Russia since it began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as as well as the Crimean Peninsula it seized in 2014.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But it has given mixed signals about what the counteroffensive would involve — preliminary, limited attacks to weaken Russian forces and military facilities, or a large scale simultaneous assault across the entire 1,100-kilometre (684-mile) front line.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Russia said its forces killed 250 Ukraine soldiers and also destroyed 16 tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles and 21 armoured combat vehicles.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The ministry added that Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov “was at one of the forward command posts” at the time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made no mention of the alleged assault in his evening video address on Sunday night. He said earlier that Kyiv was ready to act. Aljazeera</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>