The Ukrainian military said Monday that shelling of its defenses across Donetsk is continuing, but renewed attempts by Russian forces to win territory have been foiled.
The General Staff said that north of the city of Sloviansk more than ten settlements had come under fire. Most civilians left the area weeks ago.
The Russians continued to shell areas along the border of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions and were persisting with a ground assault to the east of the city of Lysychansk, which they took last month.
Ukrainian forces still defending this pocket of territory in eastern Donetsk region are being attacked from two sides as the Russians try to close in on the town of Siversk. But the General Staff said that “our defenders successfully repulsed the assaults in the areas of Verkhniokamianske, Spirne and Serebrianka settlements,” all close to Siversk.
The Ukrainian military said Russian efforts to attack from the south, near Bakhmut, had also been rebuffed.
At a standstill: Overall, very little territory has changed hands in Donbas since the fall of Lysychansk as Ukrainian forces have adopted new defensive positions.
Oleksandr Honcharenko, the mayor of Kramatorsk, said that early Monday, there had been four strikes on an industrial zone in the city. Kramatorsk is some distance from the front lines but one of several cities in the west of Donetsk region that are seeing an uptick in long-range Russian missile and rocket attacks.
In the south, the military said the Russians had tried to carry out an airstrike in northern Kherson, parts of which were liberated in recent weeks.
“After attacking our positions, the [enemy] immediately retreated under the onslaught of fire,” Operational Command South said. It claimed that Ukrainian aircraft had hit Russian weapons and ammunition near Davydiv Brid, on the border of Kherson and Mykolaiv regions.
Elsewhere in the south, heavy shelling was reported overnight in the town of Nikopol in Dnipropetrovsk region, with about ten homes and a power plant hit.
