The battle rages for the Ukrainian region of Donbas

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RUSKA LOZOVA (AP) — Russia struck positions in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, its defense ministry said, as it sought to encircle Ukrainian forces in the battle for Donbas and fend off a counteroffensive around the strategic U.S.-controlled city of Izium. Russia.

Meanwhile, the secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) told a meeting in Germany that Ukraine could win the war, calling for more military support and accelerated approval of expected offers from Finland and Sweden to join Ukraine. The alliance.

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Ukraine has scored a string of successes since Russia invaded on February 24, forcing Russian commanders to abandon an advance on the capital, kyiv, before making rapid progress to drive them out of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. .

The invasion of Moscow, which it calls a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists, has shaken European security. kyiv and its Western allies say the assertion of fascism is a baseless pretext for an unprovoked war of aggression.

The president of Finland, which shares a 1,300 km (800 mile) border with Russia, confirmed on Sunday that his country would apply to join NATO, a major policy change prompted by Russia’s invasion. Sweden’s ruling party did the same.

Since mid-April, Russian forces have focused much of their firepower on trying to capture two eastern provinces known as Donbas after failing to take kyiv.

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A British military intelligence assessment said Russia had lost around a third of the ground combat force deployed in February. Its Donbas offensive had been “significantly” delayed and was unlikely to make any rapid advances over the next 30 days, according to the assessment.

“Russia’s war in Ukraine is not going as Moscow planned,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

Ukraine received a morale boost with victory in the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday night, a win seen as a sign of the strength of popular support for Ukraine across Europe.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy welcomed the victory but said the situation in Donbas remains very difficult and Russian forces are still trying to salvage some kind of victory in a region divided by conflict since 2014.

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Still, he promised in his late-night address on Sunday that Russia’s attacks on Sunday in Lviv and elsewhere would only end with surviving Russian soldiers “taking this evil with them back to Russia.”

‘THERE IS NO WHERE TO BURY ANYONE’

Russia said on Sunday it had targeted Ukrainian positions in the east with missiles, targeting command centers and arsenals as its forces sought to encircle Ukrainian units between Izium and Donetsk.

The Ukrainian Joint Forces Task Force said its troops repelled 17 attacks on Sunday and destroyed 11 Russian equipment. The Ukrainian air force command, in a statement on Facebook, said that Ukrainian forces shot down two helicopters, two cruise missiles and seven drones. .

Russia continued to attack civilian areas along the entire front line in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, firing at 23 towns and cities, the task force added.

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Reuters was unable to independently confirm the reports.

Izium straddles the Donets River, about 120 km (75 mi) from Kharkiv on the main road in a southeasterly direction.

If Ukraine can keep up the pressure on Izium and Russian supply lines, it will be harder for Moscow to encircle battle-hardened Ukrainian troops on the eastern front in the Donbas.

“The hottest point is still the Izium address,” Ukraine’s regional governor Oleh Sinegubov said in comments posted on social media. “Our armed forces have gone on a counteroffensive there. The enemy is retreating on some fronts.”

In some areas, Russian units are now operating at less than 20% of their strength, Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel said.

Vadym Denysenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, told Ukrainian television that forces could move to the border in the coming days to put pressure on Russian troops in northeast Kharkiv.

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In Ruska Lozova, a village located in sprawling fields between Kharkiv and Ukraine’s border with Russia, Ukrainian commanders said they believed Moscow was redeploying troops to defend Izium while keeping opponents pinned down with artillery fire.

“The Russian attack on Kharkiv has been destroyed and they understand it,” said Ihor Obolensky, who commands the National Guard and the volunteer force that captured Ruska Lozova eight days ago. “They need to try for a new victory and they want to keep Izium.”

But Ukraine’s military also acknowledged the setbacks in an update early Sunday, saying: “Despite losses, Russian forces continue to advance in Lyman, Sievierodonetsk, Avdiivka and Kurakhiv areas in the wider Donbas region.”

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Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the eastern Luhansk region, said evacuations were still ongoing as battles around Sievierodonetsk continued and Russia appeared to be redirecting its forces to the area.

“The goal is to cut off the main Bakhmut-Lysychansk route and encircle the entire region,” he told US-funded Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty.

In western Ukraine near Poland, missiles destroyed military infrastructure overnight Saturday and were fired at the Lviv region from the Black Sea, Ukrainian officials said.

Another 10 civilians were injured in the southern Mykolaiv region in the past 24 hours, the regional council said, without giving details. The reports could not be independently verified.

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There was also no let up on Sunday in the Russian shelling of the steelworks in the southern port of Mariupol, where a few hundred Ukrainian fighters are holding out weeks after the city fell to Russian hands, the Ukrainian military said.

In a video posted by a pro-Russian separatist commander, brightly burning ammunition was shown cascading over the steel mill.

“We are continuing very difficult and delicate negotiations” to save the Ukrainians in Mariupol and Azovstal, Zelenskiy said.

A large convoy carrying refugees from the ruins of Mariupol arrived in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia on Saturday night after waiting days for Russian troops to allow them to leave.

Iryna Petrenko, a 63-year-old woman in the convoy, said she had initially stayed to care for her 92-year-old mother, who later died: “We buried her next to her house, because there was nowhere to bury anyone. ”

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MORE WEAPONS

Finland and Sweden have said NATO membership would bolster their security, though Russia has warned it would be a mistake for Helsinki to abandon its neutrality and vowed to take steps to “strengthen” its border with Finland if NATO weapons are stationed there.

Sweden’s ruling Social Democrats on Sunday endorsed NATO membership, paving the way for an application and abandoning decades of military non-alignment with their prime minister to seek parliament’s support on Monday.

NATO’s Stoltenberg and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed confidence that Turkey’s concerns about the Baltic states’ offers could be overcome, with Stoltenberg indicating that an accelerated accession process and agreements would be possible. temporary security.

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In addition to losing a large number of men and much military equipment, Russia has been affected by economic sanctions, while Western states have provided Ukraine with military aid.

Ukraine has deployed many of its new US M-777 howitzers to the front lines, and Washington has delivered all but one of the 90 artillery pieces it was due to send, the US embassy in kyiv said.

US lawmakers are poised to press ahead this week with efforts to send more aid.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay, Natalia Zinets, Gleb Garanich, Leonardo Benassatto, Tara Oakes, Tom Balmforth, Idrees Ali, David Ljunggren, Lidia Kelly, Nick Starkov and other Reuters offices; Written by Aidan Lewis, Simon Cameron-Moore and Susan Heavey ; Edited by William Mallard, David Clarke, Jonathan Oatis and Lincoln Feast)