MOSCOW (Reuters) -The chief of Russia’s general staff, Valery Gerasimov, has inspected the “Centre” group of Russian forces which is fighting in the Pokrovsk area of the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday.
Pokrovsk, which Russia refers to by its Soviet-era name of Krasnoarmeisk, is one of the focal points of Russian military action in the drive to secure control over all of the Donetsk region.
The defence ministry said the commanders of Russian unites updated Gerasimov on battlefield developments.
It posted a video on its Telegram channel, showing Gerasimov boarding, flying and disembarking a military helicopter, and then meeting the officers in military fatigues.
Russia controls nearly 19% of what is internationally recognised to be Ukraine, including Crimea and the Luhansk region, more than 70% of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and fragments of the Kharkiv and Sumy regions.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
