Russia, Ukraine give conflicting Zaporizhzhia frontline accounts

Russia and Ukraine gave clashing accounts over the weekend about what is going on along the frontline in the Zaporizhzhia region, with Moscow saying it has stopped Kyiv’s counter-offensive and Ukraine’s army saying it keeps pressing on.
Ukraine has retaken a few small villages in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region since the start of its counter-offensive in June, but progress has been small and the vast frontline in the country’s east and south has changed little over the past year.
“The enemy has been stopped and their counter-offensive, which has been so hyped, has been completely halted,” Yevgeny Balitsky, the top Moscow-installed official in the Zaporizhzhia region, told the Russian state news agency in remarks published on Monday.
Balitsky said that small battles were ongoing near the village of Robotyne and near the village of Shcherbaky, which is about 22 km to the northwest.
With both sides controlling the spread of battlefield information and claiming successes in small parcels of land, it has been difficult to establish who has been making meaningful advances and how fierce the fighting has been.