Kyiv said Friday its forces had recaptured a village in the eastern Donetsk region and territory around another war-scarred town there, as Moscow-proxies held votes on annexation by Russia. “The Ukrainian army has retaken the village of Yatskivka in Donetsk region,” Oleksiy Gromov, a senior army official, told reporters. Kyiv’s forces had “regained control over positions to the south of Bakhmut”, Gromov added. Yatskivka sits on the eastern bank of the strategic Oskil river, which Kyiv’s forces crossed after recapturing swathes of territory in neighbouring Kharkiv region. Bakhmut, a key city with a pre-war population of 70,000 people, is also located in the Donetsk region and has been under Russian attacks for months. Moscow’s forces have failed so far to capture it. The Donetsk region and three other provinces in Ukraine that are fully or partially controlled by Russia — Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — are holding votes on whether to be annexed by Moscow. The ballots have been dismissed as a “sham” by Kyiv and its Western allies.