Ukrainian troops retreated in Donbass

Ukraine said today it was forced to cede territory in the eastern part of the country in the face of a Russian offensive.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week described the pressure his country’s armed forces are under in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine as “hell”. He spoke of heavy fighting around the town of Avdiivka and the fortified village of Pisky, where Kyiv conceded “a partial success” to its Russian rivals in recent days.

The Ukrainian military said today that Russian forces had launched at least two attacks against Pisky, but Ukrainian soldiers managed to repel them.

Over the past eight years, Ukraine has strengthened defensive positions in Pisky, seeing it as a buffer zone against Russian-backed forces that control the city of Donetsk about 10 km to the southeast.

General Oleksii Gromov told a news conference that Ukrainian forces had recaptured two villages around the eastern city of Sloviansk, but were pushed back to the outskirts of the town of Avdiivka after being forced to abandon a coal mine considered a key defensive position.

The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed its attack.

He said his forces inflicted heavy casualties on Ukrainian forces around Avdiivka and two other areas in Donetsk province, forcing Kiev’s infantry units to retreat.

Reuters is unable to confirm either side’s claims at this time.

Video footage released by the Russian Defense Ministry shows Russian rocket launchers in action and tanks advancing and firing at high speed over open terrain. It was not clear where they were filmed.

Unconfirmed reports indicate that Russian-backed forces have reached the outskirts of Piski.

Equipped with sophisticated weapons systems from the West, Ukraine is also attacking Russian-backed forces in the region.

Officials in the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic said today that at least five people were killed and six wounded by Ukrainian shelling in the city of Donetsk.

Footage posted on social media showed bodies, some dismembered, on the side of a street in central Donetsk. Blood can be seen on the pavement.

Pavlo Kirilenko, the Ukrainian governor of Donetsk, told Telegram that three civilians had been killed by Russian shelling in Bakhmut, Mariinka and Shevchenko and five wounded in the past 24 hours.

Eight people were killed and four wounded by Russian artillery shelling in the Donetsk town of Toretsk, he said.

Russia, which denies deliberately targeting civilians, has said it plans to take full control of the greater Donetsk province, one of two that make up the industrial Donbass region, as part of what it calls a “special military operation” to ensure its security from what it claims is an unjustified enlargement of NATO.

Ukraine and the West, which characterize Russia’s actions as an unprovoked imperialist-style war of aggression, say Russian forces must withdraw to the positions they held before February 24, when President Vladimir Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.

Moscow, which has often spoken of the need to push its forces deeper into Ukraine, seems unlikely to agree to do so willingly.

Ukraine has said the Russian offensive in the east appears to be an attempt to force it to withdraw troops from the south where Kiev’s forces are trying to regain ground and destroy Russian supply lines ahead of a wider counteroffensive.

“The idea is to put military pressure on us in Kharkiv. Donetsk and Luhansk in the next few weeks… What happens in the east is not what will determine the outcome of the war,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Olokshey Arestovich said in an interview on YouTube.

General Oleksii Gromov said Russia may launch its own offensive in the southern Kherson region in a bid to regain momentum in the war after bolstering its forces there.