The Ukrainian army announced the recapture of the city from the Russian troops in the Donetsk region, which coincided with the start of the referendum

The Ukrainian army has announced it has recaptured a city from Russian troops in the eastern part of Donetsk Oblast, coinciding with Moscow organizing referendums to annex many of the territories it controls in Ukraine.

In a TV interview, Oleksiy Gromov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military headquarters, said that “the Ukrainian army has recaptured Yatskovka,” and control of the city on the eastern shore of Lake Oskil confirms the continuation of the counter-offensive that previously allowed Kyiv to regain control over thousands of square kilometers in the neighboring Kharkiv region.

Notably, “annexation referendums” in regions of Ukraine that are wholly or partly under Russian control began at 5:00 GMT, which Kyiv and Western countries considered “fictitious.”

In this context, Agence France-Presse reported that “voting will continue until September 27 in the pro-Russian separatist Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, and in Russian-controlled Kherson and Zaporizhia regions in southern Ukraine, at the height of the Russian military invasion of the country.”