(Kyiv) Ukraine admitted on Sunday that the situation was “tense” on the eastern front, where a Russian army “in numerical superiority” is pushing ever harder to seize the strategic locality of Chassiv Yar, facing forces Ukrainians with low ammunition stocks.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Roustem Umerov said he visited soldiers in the area where the fighting is currently taking place.
On this eastern front, where “the situation is tense”, Russian troops, “in numerical superiority”, are attempting a breakthrough “west of Bakhmout”, a town that they conquered in May 2023 at the end of a particularly bloody and destructive battle, he said.
A little earlier, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, General Oleksandr Syrsky, had also assured that Russia was concentrating its efforts in this area in order to seize Chassiv Yar, about 20 km to the west of Bakhmut.
Such a conquest would offer the Russian military a chance to advance in the region.
This city, perched on a height, extends less than 30 kilometers southeast of Kramatorsk, the main city in the region under Ukrainian control and an important railway and logistics hub.
Towards “deeper progress”?
Russia thus wants to “create the conditions for a deeper advance” towards Kramatorsk, noted the commander-in-chief.
Oleksandr Syrsky, who stressed that the forces defending Chassiv Yar had received additional weapons, had recognized the day before that the situation on the eastern front had “considerably deteriorated”.
Despite their losses, the Russians are deploying “new armored units”, which allows them to achieve “tactical successes”, he declared.
In recent weeks, Moscow has regularly claimed the capture of villages, notably near the town of Avdiïvka on Saturday.
This offensive occurs at a very delicate time for the Ukrainian army, which is struggling to recruit against an adversary whose troops are better stocked and better equipped.
“A real defense”
Western aid is stalling, in particular due to political blockages in Washington, which is forcing the Ukrainian military to save their ammunition. For months, Kyiv has been urging its partners to deliver more weapons and air defense systems.
“Rhetoric does not protect the sky,” President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted again on Sunday.
He noted that the nighttime attack by Iranian drones and missiles against Israel, which announced that it had intercepted almost all of them, demonstrated the “effectiveness” of modern aviation and air defense systems.
“The world has seen what real defense is. He sees that it is possible,” insisted the Ukrainian head of state.
In recent weeks, the Russian army has also increasingly bombarded the border region of Kharkiv in the northeast, where the city of the same name, Ukraine’s second largest, is located.
On Saturday evening, a strike caused the death of two people in a village in this part of the territory, Governor Oleg Synegoubov lamented on Sunday.
Russian attacks on the energy grid also continue to cause power outages in this region.
In the Center-South, bombings injured at least 12 people in the town of Dnipro and in a neighboring town, announced Governor Serguiï Lyssak.
One person also died in a Russian drone attack on Sunday morning in the Sumy region (north-east), according to the Prosecutor General’s Office.
For his part, the head of the Russian occupation administration in the southern region of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, said on Sunday that Ukrainian strikes had left two dead and one injured in villages in this area.