Donetsk People’s Militia units have shelled the positions of Ukrainian forces outside the settlement of New York, a Sputnik correspondent embedded with the forces has reported.
“The enemy is suffering heavy losses. At the moment, they’re trying to evacuate their personnel and are retreating, quickly retreating from their positions,” a howitzer unit commander told the correspondent.
“At the moment armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles have been detected in the area, an APC has been destroyed. At the moment, they’re trying to evacuate,” the commander said.
The People’s Militia also indicated that Ukrainian ultranationalist detachments appear to have set up blocking detachments to try to prevent regular Ukrainian army troops from falling back – a tactic common to notorious neo-Nazi militias such as the Azov Regiment.
Video shows DPR troops preparing camouflaged howitzers for fire, arming, aiming and firing at enemy positions.
New York is a small urban settlement situated in north-central Donetsk. The town, which has a population of about 9,700, received its American-style name in the 1840s after being settled by a group of Mennonites invited into the Donbass by Catherine the Great of Russia. The settlement was renamed Novgorodskoye in 1951. In 2021, Ukraine’s parliament passed a law to rename the settlement back to New York.
The settlement has been situated near the frontline of fierce fighting between Ukrainian and DPR militia since 2014.
After liberating most of Lugansk in the summer, Russian and Donbass People’s Militia forces have concentrated on attempting to dislodge Ukrainian forces from Donetsk. The Ukrainian military spent years building entrenchments and fortifications in the region, and has placed artillery there, using it to launch indiscriminate artillery strikes against the city of Donetsk and other settlements. Hundreds of civilians have been killed and injured in these attacks.