By Olena Harmash
KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s top commander said on Monday that Russian forces were carrying out relentless attacks to try to advance towards the eastern city of Pokrovsk, a logistics hub, and that there was active fighting taking place along the entire front line.
Nearly 29 months since the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has intensified its mobilization effort to address manpower shortages and has been reinforced by supplies of Western artillery shells, but Russian troops have continued to advance.
“The enemy pays no attention to their rather high level of losses and continues to advance towards Pokrovsk,” Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a statement from the eastern front.
Pokrovsk is less than 25 km (15 miles) from Russian-occupied land, according to open source intelligence battlefield maps, and sits at an intersection of roads and a railway that makes it an important logistical point for the military and civilians in the east.
“Active combat operations of varying intensity are taking place along the entire front,” Syrskyi said, noting that Russian forces were also trying to capture lowland islands near the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine.
FIGHTING RABIES IN THE EAST
Fierce battles, he said, also took place near several eastern villages and towns, including Krasnohorivka and Chasiv Yar, a strategic hilltop town whose capture would bring Russia closer to threatening important cities in the Donetsk region controlled by Kiev.
Russia carried out 39 attacks on the Pokrovsk front in the past 24 hours, out of a total of 117 recorded along the front line, the military said in its daily battlefield readout.
Russian forces captured two villages in the east over the weekend, Russian media reported, citing the Defense Ministry.
Although Kiev’s tired troops have been at a disadvantage this year, with Russia again on the offensive and keeping up the pressure, Moscow’s progress has been slow.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who is traveling to China this week on a diplomatic trip, estimated on Friday that Russia controlled 17.68% of Ukrainian territory, compared with 17.61% on January 1, 2024.
A senior NATO official said this month that Russia lacked the ammunition and troops for a major offensive in Ukraine and would need to secure significant supplies of ammunition from other countries, in addition to what it already has, to be able to do so.
LONG RANGE ATTACKS
Russia has hit Ukraine’s electrical system with airstrikes in recent months, causing regular power outages across the country.
Ukraine used domestically-made drones to attack targets in Russia and carried out a major attack overnight that damaged its Tuapse oil refinery, the largest in the Black Sea.
In his statement, Syrskyi said it was vital for Kiev to conduct long-range strikes against Russian forces, echoing Ukrainian officials who have called on allies to allow Kiev to use Western-supplied weapons to attack military targets inside Russia.
Russia has warned that the use of US and Western weapons against targets inside Russia could trigger a new level of confrontation.
Ukraine also faces a shortage of short-range anti-aircraft missiles to repel Russian reconnaissance drones and must rely on drones and other electronic warfare systems for defense, he said.
(Reporting by Olena Harmash; Editing by Tom Balmforth and Sharon Singleton)
