Ukrainian counterattacks slow Russian offensive in the east

Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) — Russian troops continue to push their offensive across eastern Donbass in a bid to seize control of Ukraine’s industrial heartland, but fierce counterattacks by soldiers in Kyiv have slowed their advance, Ukrainian and British officials said on Saturday.

Russia continues to fight for full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which make up the Donbass, and seeks to secure “a land route between these territories and occupied Crimea”, which would involve ending the last pocket of resistance in a steel plant in the besieged port city of Mariupol, explained the Ukrainian general staff.

In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian forces repelled eight Russian attacks in the two regions, destroying nine tanks, 18 armored units and 13 vehicles, one tank truck and three artillery systems, the military command added.

“The units of the Russian occupiers are regrouping. The Russian enemy continues to launch missile and bomb attacks against military and civilian infrastructure,” the General Staff said on its Facebook page.

For his part, the governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, declared on Saturday that two people had died following a Russian attack on the town of Popasna.

According to the president, a train will leave on Saturday from the eastern city of Pokrovsk with civilians from Donetsk and Luhansk on board. His destination will be Chop, a Ukrainian town near the border with Slovakia and Hungary, he added.

“Besides the fact that street battles have been going on in the city for several weeks, the Russian army is constantly firing on multi-storey residential buildings and private houses,” Haidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “Only yesterday, the inhabitants withstood five enemy artillery attacks… Not all of them survived.

According to the British Ministry of Defence, although they have increased their activity, “Russian forces have made no significant progress in the past 24 hours, as Ukrainian counterattacks continue to hamper their efforts”.

Moscow has yet to take air or sea control of the area due to Ukrainian resistance and, despite its President Vladimir Putin’s declaration of victory in Mariupol, “heavy fighting continues to thwart Russian attempts to s ‘capturing the city, further slowing its desired advance into the Donbass’, explained the British authorities.

After numerous failed attempts, Ukrainian authorities tried on Saturday to deport women, children and the elderly from Mariupol. “If everything goes as planned,” the evacuation will begin at noon, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk explained on Telegram.

Russia has withdrawn a dozen military units from the front line in the city to reinforce the offensive elsewhere in Donbass, while continuing to keep Ukrainian resistance entrenched in the Azovstal steelworks, its last stronghold, according to Ukrainian officials.

Putin ordered his forces not to attack the site, but rather to surround it in an apparent attempt to force its occupants to surrender.

In the city, which was largely reduced to smoldering rubble after weeks of shelling, Russian state TV showed the flag of pro-Russian Donetsk separatists raised on what it said was its highest point. , the television tower. He also showed what he said was the besieged factory’s main building on fire.

Under cover of darkness, Ukrainian forces brought weapons to Azovstal by helicopter, said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.

The Kremlin has sent more than 100,000 soldiers and mercenaries from Syria and Libya to fight in Ukraine, and is deploying more troops to the country every day, he added, noting that “we have a complicated situation, but our army defends our state.

Several towns and villages were shelled in Donbass, the new main theater of the war, as well as in the Kharkiv region, a short distance to the west, and in the south, authorities said.

Mariupol grew in importance as the war progressed. Its fall to the Russians would deprive the Ukrainians of a vital port and complete a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, which Putin annexed to Ukraine in 2014. Its conquest would mean that Moscow could commit more troops to the Battle of Donbass, which the Kremlin says is the main objective of the invasion.

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Fisch reported from Zaporizhia, Ukraine. Associated Press reporters from across Ukraine and around the world contributed to this report.

Source: Publimetro