“The occupiers made an try to interrupt by way of our defenses alongside practically your entire frontline,” the Normal Employees mentioned in an announcement.
The stepped-up assaults started Monday alongside a entrance of greater than 300 miles (480 kilometers), centered on the Donbas areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, with the Russian forces making an attempt to advance in a number of sections, together with from neighboring Kharkiv.
In southern Donetsk, the Normal Employees mentioned the Russian army has continued to blockade and shell the strategic port metropolis of Mariupol and fireplace missiles at different cities.
On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned in a video handle {that a} “important a part of your entire Russian military is now focused on this offensive.”
Moscow-backed separatists have been preventing Ukrainian forces for eight years within the principally Russian-speaking Donbas and have declared two unbiased republics which were acknowledged by Russia. Russia has declared the seize of the Donbas to be its principal objective within the struggle since its try to seize the capital, Kyiv, failed.
“Irrespective of what number of Russian troops are pushed there, we’ll battle,” Zelenskyy vowed. “We are going to defend ourselves.”
Earlier than the offensive bought underway, Russia bombarded the western metropolis of Lviv and different targets in what seemed to be an intensified bid to grind down Ukraine’s defenses.
On Monday morning, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s nationwide safety council, informed Ukrainian media that the defensive position had not been damaged.
“Thankfully, our army is holding out,” Danilov mentioned. “They handed by way of solely two cities. That is Kreminna and one other small city.”
There have been avenue battles in Kreminna, and Russian forces took management of the town, in accordance with Luhansk regional army administrator Serhiy Haidai. He informed Ukrainian TV that heavy artillery fireplace set seven residential buildings on fireplace and focused a sports activities complicated the place the nation’s Olympic crew trains.
Haidai mentioned that earlier than advancing, Russian forces “simply began leveling every part to the bottom.” He mentioned his forces retreated to regroup and hold preventing.
In Mariupol, Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian Nationwide Guard, mentioned in a video message that Russia had begun dropping bunker-buster bombs on the Azovstal metal plant the place the regiment was holding out.
The sprawling plant incorporates a warren of tunnels the place each fighters and civilians are sheltering. It’s believed to be the final main pocket of resistance within the shattered metropolis.
Russia has Mariupol surrounded and has been preventing a bloody battle to grab it. If Russia takes Mariupol, it will unlock troops to be used elsewhere within the Donbas, deprive Ukraine of an important port, and full a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, seized from Ukraine from 2014.
In western Ukraine close to the Polish border, at the least seven folks have been reported killed Monday in missile strikes.
Lviv has been a haven for civilians fleeing the preventing elsewhere. And to the Kremlin’s rising anger, the town has additionally grow to be a significant gateway for NATO-supplied weapons.
The assault hit three army infrastructure services and an auto store, in accordance with the area’s governor, Maksym Kozytskyy.
A resort sheltering Ukrainians who had fled the preventing in different components of the nation was additionally badly broken, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi mentioned.
“The nightmare of struggle has caught up with us even in Lviv,” mentioned Lyudmila Turchak, who fled with two youngsters from Kharkiv within the east.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest metropolis, was hit by shelling that killed at the least three folks, in accordance with Related Press journalists on the scene. One of many lifeless was a girl who seemed to be going out to gather water within the rain. She was discovered with a water canister and an umbrella by her facet.
Moscow mentioned its missiles struck army targets in jap and central Ukraine together with ammunition depots, command headquarters, and teams of troops and automobiles. It reported that its artillery hit lots of of Ukrainian targets, and that warplanes performed 108 strikes on troops and army tools. The claims couldn’t be independently verified.
Gen. Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British Army, informed Sky News that Russia was waging a “softening-up” marketing campaign forward of the Donbas offensive.
A senior U.S. protection official, talking on situation of anonymity to debate the Pentagon’s assessments of the struggle, mentioned there at the moment are 76 Russian fight items, referred to as battalion tactical teams, in jap and southern Ukraine, up from 65 final week. That would translate to round 50,000 to 60,000 troops, primarily based on what the Pentagon mentioned at the beginning of the struggle was the standard unit power of 700 to 800 troopers.
Related Press journalists Nico Maounis and Philip Crowther in Lviv, Ukraine, and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report, as did different AP employees members all over the world.
Comply with the AP’s protection of the struggle at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
