DONETSK, June 8 -- The Russian Defense Ministry announced Monday that units of the South Group of Forces had seized the settlement of Khimik in the Donetsk People's Republic, a small node on the DPR's southern axis that Moscow's battlefield communiques now place firmly behind its lines. The advance is incremental. The arithmetic surrounding it is not.

"Units of the Youg group of forces have decisively liberated the village of Khimik in the Donetsk People's Republic," the Defense Ministry said in a statement Monday, using the transliteration of the Russian word for "South." No casualty figures were attached to the announcement, and neither the scale of the fighting nor the Ukrainian response was addressed in official Russian communication...