The fighting was concentrated on Saturday in eastern Ukraine, where the Russian army now makes its priority without sparing the west of the country, on the 31st day of its offensive.
Russian forces also continue to besiege several major cities, including Kharkiv, Cherniguiv and Mariupol.
“But they are reluctant to engage in large-scale urban operations and prefer to stick to aerial bombardment and indiscriminate artillery fire in an attempt to demoralize the opposing defense,” notes the British Ministry of Defence.
Russia announced Friday its decision to focus on “the liberation of Donbass”, in eastern Ukraine, stronghold of pro-Russian separatists, seeming to revise its war objectives downward.
US President Joe Biden, however, said in Warsaw on Saturday that he was “not sure” the announcement meant a change in Russian strategy.
Here is the situation on the ground on this 31st day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Fighting in the East
Around Donetsk and Lugansk, the two big cities of Donbass, the Ukrainian army claims “to have inflicted significant losses on the Russian invaders”, in its last bulletin published on Saturday. It reports three planes shot down, eight tanks destroyed and some 170 soldiers killed on the Russian side.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported a battle for control of two villages near Donetsk, Novobakhmutivka and Novomykhailivka.
“The Russians are not only trying to achieve gains [territoriaux] substantial for future negotiations but also to cut the Ukrainian forces [de leur base arrière] in the east of the country,” a senior Pentagon official said on Friday.
The west, on the Polish border
Lviv, a large western city relatively spared from the fighting so far, suffered two Russian strikes on Saturday afternoon, hitting a fuel depot and injuring at least five people, according to local authorities.
The city suffered a first strike on March 18, which hit an aircraft repair factory near the airport, without causing any casualties. On March 13, Russian cruise missiles targeted a major military base about 40 kilometers northwest of Lviv, killing at least 35 people and injuring 134.
Kyiv and the North
Around kyiv, the fighting continues to “repel the enemy offensive”, according to the Ukrainian general staff, specifying that the front line has not moved.
The mayor of kyiv finally gave up imposing a new curfew of 35 hours, which he had announced from Saturday evening, to return to a curfew applying only from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m., like all nights.
“The Russians are in defensive positions. It seems that they have stopped any advance towards kyiv,” the senior Pentagon official stressed.
160 km north of kyiv, the Russian army has taken control of the town of Slavoutitch, where the staff of the Chernobyl power plant reside, arresting the mayor and sparking pro-Ukrainian demonstrations.
The city of Cherniguiv, about 120 km northeast of kyiv, is surrounded by Russian forces and it is impossible to evacuate the civilians and the wounded on a massive scale, announced its mayor, Vladislav Atrochenko.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said for its part that Kalibr-type rockets destroyed an arms and ammunition depot in the Zhytomyr region, west of kyiv, on March 25.
The South and the Black Sea
The forces of kyiv assure to continue their counter-offensive on Kherson, in the south of the country, the only large city to have been completely conquered by the forces of Moscow.
In Odessa, a major Black Sea port, the threat of a Russian offensive seems to be receding. “There is no sign of an imminent amphibious or ground attack,” notes the senior Pentagon official.
Near the nearby port city of Mykolaiv, a fuel depot was hit, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
The Ukrainian army continues to hold the adversary at a distance of 15 kilometers outside Mykolaiv.
In the strategic port city of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, where the Russians are trying to make the territorial junction between the separatist regions of Donbass and the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014, the tension does not decrease.
A humanitarian convoy from this besieged city with ambulances carrying injured children was blocked on Saturday at a Russian checkpoint, according to Lioudmyla Denisova, in charge of human rights in Ukraine.
Human losses
No precise and recent assessment of civilian victims is available. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights mentioned at least 925 civilians killed, including 75 children, a few days ago. There is little doubt that the actual balance sheets are much higher.
Militarily, the ranges are extremely wide. Russia acknowledged on Friday the death of 1,351 of its soldiers for 3,825 wounded, the first figures for more than three weeks.
Western sources speak in unison of several thousand deaths on the Russian side, kyiv even going as high as 12,000.
Refugees and displaced
More than ten million Ukrainians (out of about 40 million) have fled their homes, of which 3.8 million have gone abroad, mainly to Poland, according to the UN count published on Saturday. Almost 6.5 million are displaced inside Ukraine.