Fighting for the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk continues with Russian forces conducting assault operations on Saturday, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said on Sunday.
“With the use of artillery, Russian forces carried out assault operations in the area of the city of Sievierodonetsk,” the General Staff said in a statement on its Facebook page.
“The fighting continues.”
“There remains a threat of the task from the territory of the Republic of Belarus of rocket and aviation strikes on Ukrainian infrastructural objects.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Saturday night television address that conditions in Donbas were “indescribably difficult”, and thanked Ukrainian defenders holding out in the face of the onslaught.
Ukraine is urgently pleading for heavy weapons to repel Russian forces in the eastern Donbas region, as relentless Russian artillery and airstrikes threaten to turn the tide of the war and support for Kyiv’s continued defiance among some west European allies appears to be slipping.
Zelenskiy has conceded that not all the land that Russia has seized since it annexed Crimea in 2014 can be recaptured militarily. While he is certain his country will take back the territory Russia has claimed since its 24 February invasion, he said other territory could not be recovered by force.
Russia’s defence ministry claims to have captured the strategically important city of Lyman and several other smaller towns and encircled Sievierodonetsk, which Ukraine denies.