Valeriy Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, has acknowledged that Russian forces “continue to advance” in Donbas but said the “intense” situation is “fully controlled.”
“I have informed my counterpart about the situation at the front line. It is intense but fully controlled,” Zaluzhny said after talking with Gen. Wayne Donald Eyre, chief of the Defence Staff of Canada.
Zaluzhny added that “the enemy continues to advance along the entire front line. At the same time, the enemy carries out approximately 700-800 [actions of] shelling of our positions every day, using from 40 to 60,000 pieces of ammunition.”
That estimate is in line with many made by Western analysts about the volume of ammunition being used by Russian forces, after a relative lull in early July.
“The enemy’s main efforts are concentrated on pushing our troops back from the Donetsk oblast. The most intense situation is now on the axis of Avdiivka-Pisky-Mariinka,” Zaluzhny said.
That axis is a stretch of some 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Donetsk.
