Ukraine on Sunday said that Russian troops were advancing in four areas in the east of the nation amid “fierce fighting,” but reported its forces moving forward in the south.
Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Maliar said that Russian troops were advancing near Avdiivka, Mariinka, Lyman and Svatove.
“Fierce fighting is going on everywhere,” Maliar wrote on social media. “The situation is quite complicated.”
Photo: AP
Ukrainian forces have made gradual progress in their counteroffensive launched last month, but have so far failed to produce a major breakthrough and have urged Western allies to escalate pledges of military support.
Maliar also said Ukrainian troops were advancing with “partial success” on the southern flank of Bakhmut in the east, and near Berdyansk and Melitopol in the south.
In the south, she said Ukrainian forces faced “intense enemy resistance, remote mining, deploying of reserves” and were only advancing “gradually.”
“They are persistently and unceasingly creating conditions for as fast an advance as possible,” she added.
The latest developments on the battlefield came after Ukrainian officials said Russia launched its first overnight drone attack on the capital, Kyiv, in 12 days.
Ukraine said all the drones were downed.
Meanwhile, Russia’s envoy to the UN in Geneva, Switzerland, said that there are currently no grounds to maintain the “status quo” of a deal that grants safe passage for Ukrainian grain to be exported via the Black Sea.
Western capitals were blocking progress on reconnecting the Russian Agricultural Bank to the SWIFT banking system, Gennadiy Gatilov told the state-backed Izvestia newspaper.
“What we are seeing now does not give us grounds to agree to maintaining the status quo” on the deal, he said in the interview, published early yesterday.
The deal, allowing grain from war-torn Ukraine to reach the global market, was renewed again in May, but for only two months, until July 17.
US President Joe Biden is to head to Europe for a three-nation trip this week, including a NATO summit in Lithuania, to focus on reinforcing the international coalition backing Ukraine as it pursues its counteroffensive.
Ukraine’s military commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny expressed frustration in an interview on Friday at slow deliveries of weaponry promised by the West.
It “pisses me off” that some in the West complain about the slow start and progress to the long-awaited push against Russian occupying forces, he told the Washington Post.
He also complained he has a fraction of the artillery shells that Russia is firing.
“A lot of people die every day — a lot. Just because no decision has been made yet,” Zaluzhny said.
Late on Sunday freedom of expression group PEN said that a Ukranian writer and war crimes investigator wounded in a Russian missile strike on a restaurant last week had died.
Victoria Amelina, 37, was wounded when a Russian missile destroyed the Ria Pizza restaurant in the eastern city of Kramatorsk on Tuesday last week, killing 12 people, including children, and wounding dozens.
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