Fighting is fierce in Ukraine as Russian troops advance in the country’s east

Despite “fierce fighting,” Ukraine said on Sunday that Russian soldiers were advancing in the south and in four districts of the country’s east.

Russian soldiers, according to deputy defense minister Ganna Maliar, are moving closer to Avdiivka, Mariinka, Lyman, and Svatove.

Maliar said on social media that “violent fighting is happening everywhere” and that “the situation is quite complicated.”

Ukrainian troops have encouraged their Western partners to increase their military assistance commitments as they have made slow but steady progress in their counteroffensive that they initiated last month.

The most recent battlefield events occurred after Ukrainian authorities said that Russia had conducted its first nocturnal drone strike in 12 days on Kyiv.

According to Ukraine, every drone was shot down.

Maliar said that Ukrainian forces were making “partial success” progress on Bakhmut’s southern flank in the east as well as close to Berdyansk and Melitopol in the south.

She said that Ukrainian troops were only moving “gradually” in the south due to “intense enemy resistance, remote mining, and the deployment of reserves.”

She said that “they are persistently and continuously establishing conditions for as quick an advance as possible.”

In an interview that was released on Friday, Valery Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, highlighted his anger with the West’s tardy delivery of promised weapons.

He told the Washington Post that it “pisses me off” when people in the West criticize the long-awaited battle against Russian occupiers for moving slowly.

Zaluzhny said that his Western backers wouldn’t begin an attack without having air dominance, but Ukraine has yet to receive the promised F-16 fighter planes from its allies.

“I don’t need 120 aircraft. I’m not going to issue a global threat. It would be sufficient to have a very small number, he told the newspaper.

He also bemoaned the fact that he only possesses a small portion of the artillery munitions Russia is using.

During the visit of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to Kyiv on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also discussed F-16 training.

Regarding the F-16 training for Ukrainian pilots, Zelensky noted, “I think some partners are dragging their feet.”

Following the United States’ approval in May, a coalition of European countries that support Kiev has said it would assist in teaching Ukrainian pilots. The alliance is headed by the Netherlands and Denmark.

Last month, Dutch Minister of Defense Kajsa Ollongren suggested that the training may begin this summer.

‘DETECTED AND DESTROYED’. –

After requesting more air defense resources from Western partners, Ukraine has now improved its ability to shoot down Russian cruise missiles and drones.

Officials from Ukraine said on Sunday that they had stopped a fresh drone assault on Kiev.

Sergiy Popko, the chief of the Kyiv municipal military administration, said that “all enemy targets in the airspace around Kyiv were detected and destroyed.”

In a second statement, the Ukrainian air force claimed that it had downed eight Iranian-made attack drones and three cruise missiles that had been placed by Moscow’s troops overnight.

The air force said that three Kalibr missiles were fired from the Black Sea and eight Shahed missiles were launched from the southeast.

It gave no information on the assaults in Kiev.

According to a source with knowledge of the situation, no missiles were shot down over Kyiv overnight.

According to Ruslan Kravchenko, chief of the Kyiv regional military administration, three homes in the area were damaged by falling debris.

The leg of one individual was hurt, Kravchenko continued.

In May, Kyiv, which had been mostly spared from bombings since the year’s beginning, was often the target of midnight aircraft bombardment.