Russian forces have taken over Ukraine's second-biggest power plant in eastern Donetsk region and are undertaking a "massive redeployment" of troops to three southern regions, a Ukrainian presidential adviser said.
Russian-backed forces claimed on Wednesday that they had captured the Soviet-era coal-fired Vuhlehirsk power plant intact, in what was Moscow's first strategic gain in more than three weeks.
"They achieved a tiny tactical advantage - they captured Vuhlehirsk," Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in an interview posted on YouTube.
Arestovych said that the Russian redeployment appeared to be changing tactics to strategic defence from offence in what Moscow calls its "special operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" its neighbour. Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24
Arestovych and another Ukrainian official said Russia was sending troops to the Melitopol and Zaporizhzhia regions and Kherson. Ukraine has shelled an important bridge straddling the Dnipro river in Kherson, closing it to traffic. Russian officials had earlier said they would turn instead to pontoon bridges and ferries to get forces across the river.
In a Wednesday evening address, Zelenskiy said Ukraine would rebuild the Antonivskyi bridge over the Dnipro and other crossings in the region.
"We are doing everything to ensure that the occupying forces do not have any logistical opportunities in our country."
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