Paramilitary Russian fighters opposed to President Vladimir Putin's rule claim that they have captured the town of Novaya Tavolzhanka in Russia's Belgorod region.
Because Russian officials are allegedly not interested in the fate of the region and no longer have the situation under control, they had now taken matters into their own hands, the fighters from the Russian Volunteer Corps said on Monday.
The Russian Volunteer Corps fights on the side of the Ukrainians but consists of Russian citizens who oppose Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Novaya Tavolzhanka has 5,000 inhabitants. "Now it's empty," a gunman said in a video.
After days of shelling in the area, the governor of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov, indirectly admitted that he was no longer in control of the situation.
The Russian Defence Ministry in Moscow has labelled the volunteers "terrorists" and "saboteurs."
There was initially no reaction from Moscow to the situation in Novaya Tavolzhanka.
In a video published on Telegram, a fighter from the corps offered to speak to Moscow officials as he claimed that the governor had no influence on the situation.
The Ukrainian army is conducting several "offensive actions" in the region around the city of Bakhmut, which is occupied by Russian troops, Kiev said on Monday.
Bakhmut was the central arena of the current fighting, Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said on her Telegram channel on Monday. Ukrainian forces continued to advance there along a broad front.
Malyar said that Ukrainian forces had taken some strategically important high points. The Russian armed forces were on the defensive, she asserted.
According to Malyar, there was also localized fighting in the south of the country.
There was no initial information from Russia.
A battle has been waged for months for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which once had 70,000 inhabitants, with heavy losses.
Wagner, the Russian mercenary group, took Bakhmut and recently announced its withdrawal, leaving the city entirely under the control of regular Moscow forces.
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who describes the Russian military leadership as "incompetent," admitted at the weekend that the Ukrainians had again taken up positions in Bakhmut.
The leader of the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, Alexander Khodakovsky, earlier contradicted Moscow's claims to have foiled a major Ukrainian offensive in the Donbass region.
The enemy is "accompanied by success," Khodakovsky wrote on his Telegram channel on Monday.
According to his account, the attacks west of the town of Vuhledar were a limited tactical move by the Ukrainians, rather than a major operation.
Before supporting the Donetsk separatists, Khodakovsky was head of the local counterterrorism unit of the Ukrainian secret service SBU until 2014. His units were incorporated into the Russian National Guard after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.
Ukrainian troops had initially given the impression of increasing the pressure on the Velyka Novosilka section of the front, where they had already succeeded in making a breakthrough on Sunday.
An assault team advanced almost unnoticed further east near the village of Novodonetske.
"The enemy has managed to put us in a difficult position," Khodakovsky wrote.
In the early hours of Monday, Russia's army spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Moscow had successfully thwarted a major Ukrainian offensive in the southern part of the Donetsk region.
The situation report by the Ukrainian General Staff did not note any special activities in the region. It said only that Vuhledar and the neighbouring villages had been shelled by Russia.
The Russian army later claimed its forces had killed 900 Ukrainian soldiers in the last 24 hours, while repelling a Ukrainian advance.
"The enemy has not achieved its set goals," Konashenkov said.
Russia's Army Group East as well as strikes by the air force and artillery fire had inflicted serious losses on the Ukrainians in the villages of Neskuchne in the Donetsk region and Novodarivka in the Zaporizhzhya region, he said.
In this area alone, the Ukrainian military had lost some 300 soldiers, according to the Russian spokesman.
In total, more than 900 Ukrainian forces were killed on all front lines within 24 hours, Konashenkov said.
There was no confirmation from the Ukrainian side of such numbers and the start of an offensive. Kiev instead described the reports as a disinformation campaign aimed at "demoralizing Ukrainians."
