Bloody battle for control rages in eastern Ukraine as Russia struggles to gain ground in Donetsk

By Julia Kesaieva, Tim Lister, Darya Tarasova and Sana Noor Haq, CNN

The Ukrainian military rebuffed Russian advances in Donetsk over the weekend, as the bloody battle for control in the eastern Donbas region grinds on.

At least eight settlements in the eastern part of Donetsk came under fire Saturday through Sunday. Most of the settlements straddle a pocket of territory in the highway that leads west from Luhansk region towards the industrial cities of Donetsk, according to the Ukrainian military.

“Ukrainian soldiers competently repelled another combat reconnaissance attempt near Berestove and Bilohorivka,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said, adding that Russian forces were “firmly repulsed, suffered losses and withdrew.”

While Russian forces fire at Ukrainian positions in Donetsk in preparation for the next stage of full-scale fighting in the war, the country’s defense ministry in Moscow on Saturday ordered commanders to take action to prevent Ukrainian strikes on Russian-held territory.

“(Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu) gave the necessary instructions to further increase the actions of groups in all operational areas in order to exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime to launch massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of settlements in Donbas and other regions,” the ministry said in a statement.

Shoigu visited Russian forces involved in what the ministry has long described as the “special military operation in Ukraine,” the statement added.

The order comes in response to a sharp rise in Ukrainian attacks far behind the front lines using recently acquired western howitzers and artillery.

Ukrainian army resists Russian advances

After Russian forces captured the last city in Luhansk region still in Ukrainian hands — Lysychansk — they have stepped up the bombardment of towns and cities in the neighboring Donetsk region.

The Russian military has kept up a persistent barrage of artillery and missile strikes across the region for several weeks. The Kremlin says the goal of what it calls the “special military operation” is to take control of both Luhansk and Donetsk. About 45% of Donetsk — a region of heavy industry interspersed with farmland — is still held by the Ukrainians.

But they are under pressure from three directions — east, north and south.

Russian forces are also firing at Ukrainian positions south of the town of Bakhmut, according to the General Staff, including missile and air strikes, as well as artillery.

Three missiles hit the Toretsk community but there was no information about casualties, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of Donetsk region military administration. In the city of Kostiantynivka, the Russians had shelled the medical college, Kyrylenko added. He also urged civilians in the area to evacuate.

For their part, the Russian armed forces have claimed “high-precision attacks” that “resulted in the elimination of 115th Mechanised Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) that had operated towards Siversk.”

The area around Siversk has been heavily contested in the last two weeks, but Ukrainian forces appear to be holding out.

Further north the city of Kharkiv has again been hit by missiles, Ukrainian officials say. Two missiles hit a five-storey industrial building and caught fire, Oleh Syniehubov, Head of Kharkiv region military administration said.

‘Russia is struggling’

As the war in Ukraine approaches five months and both armies suffer heavy losses, western officials say Ukraine “absolutely” believes it will regain territory from Russia and win the war.

“They are absolutely clear that they plan to restore the whole of their territory in terms of Ukraine, and they see a Russia that is struggling, a Russia that we assess has lost more than 30% of its land combat effectiveness,” UK Chief of the Defense Staff Admiral Tony Radakin told the BBC Sunday.

“What that actually means is 50,000 Russian soldiers that have either died or been injured in this conflict, nearly 1,700 Russian tanks destroyed, nearly 4,000 armored fighting vehicles that belong to Russia (were) destroyed.

“And what you’re seeing is a Russia, if we focus on the Donbas, that is less than 10% of the territory of Ukraine and we are approaching 150 days, and Russia is struggling to take that territory, and it is struggling because of the courage and determination of the Ukrainian armed forces.

“Russia started this invasion with the ambition to take the whole of Ukraine, Russia had the ambition to take the cities in the first 30 days, Russia had the ambition to create fractures and to apply pressure to NATO, this is Russia as a challenge to the world order, Russia is failing in all of those ambitions, Russia is a more diminished nation than it was at the beginning of February,” Radakin added.

The UK has been one of the strongest backers of President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian war effort.

But the Ukrainians are stretched along a vast front line from the Black Sea to the northeastern border with Russia — well over 1,000 kilometers in length. Despite a steady flow of western arms, Ukraine remains heavily outgunned by vast amounts of Russian artillery, missile batteries and mortars.

Very little ground has been won or lost this month — by either side — and western analysts see the conflict devolving into a tough war of attrition.

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CNN’s Julia Kesaieva reported from Kyiv, Tim Lister, Darya Tarasova and Sana Noor Haq wrote in London. Rob Picheta contributed to this story.