Russia’s gains in Ukraine’s east limited and achieved “at significant cost” due to Ukrainian resistance – MoD

The Ministry of Defence has said Russia’s gains of land in Ukraine’s east have been limited and achieved “at significant cost” to its military due to Ukrainian resistance.
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In a Friday morning intelligence update, the department said: “The Battle of Donbas remains Russia’s main strategic focus, in order to achieve its stated aim of securing control over the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

“In these oblasts fighting has been particularly heavy around Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, with an attempted advance south from Izium towards Slovyansk.

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“Due to strong Ukrainian resistance, Russian territorial gains have been limited and achieved at significant cost to Russian forces”.

People walk past the site of an explosion in Kyiv, Ukraine on Friday, April 29, 2022. Russia struck the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv shortly after a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday evening. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)People walk past the site of an explosion in Kyiv, Ukraine on Friday, April 29, 2022. Russia struck the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv shortly after a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday evening. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
People walk past the site of an explosion in Kyiv, Ukraine on Friday, April 29, 2022. Russia struck the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv shortly after a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday evening. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Russia pounded targets all over Ukraine on Thursday, including the attack on Kyiv that struck a residential high-rise and another building and wounded 10 people, including at least one who lost a leg, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.

The bombardment came barely an hour after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held a news conference with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who toured some of the destruction in and around Kyiv and condemned the attacks on civilians.

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In the last 24 hours, explosions were reported across the country, in Polonne in the west, Chernihiv near the border with Belarus, and Fastiv, a large railway hub southwest of the capital. The mayor of Odesa, in southern Ukraine, said rockets were intercepted by air defences.

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Ukrainian authorities also reported intense Russian fire in the Donbas — the eastern industrial heartland that the Kremlin says is its main objective — and near Kharkiv, a north-eastern city outside the Donbas that is seen as key to the offensive.

In Zaporizhzhia, a crucial way station for tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing Mariupol, an 11-year-old boy was among at least three people wounded in a rocket attack that authorities said was the first to hit a residential area in the southern city since the war began.

In the ruined southern port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian fighters holed up in the steel plant that represents the last pocket of resistance said concentrated bombing overnight killed and wounded more people. And authorities warned that a lack of safe drinking water inside the city could lead to outbreaks of deadly diseases such as cholera and dysentery.

The head of the United Nations described Ukraine as “an epicentre of unbearable heartache and pain”

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who held a news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before the bombardment of Russian attacks yesterday said: “Wherever there is a war, the highest price is paid by civilians”

Western officials say the Kremlin’s apparent goal is to take the Donbas by encircling and crushing Ukrainian forces from the north, south and east.

But so far, Russia’s troops and their allied separatist forces appear to have made only minor gains, taking several small towns as they try to advance in relatively small groups against staunch Ukrainian resistance.

Ukraine’s military said that Russian troops were subjecting several places in the Donbas to “intense fire” and that over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian forces had repelled six attacks in the region.

Ukraine has urged its allies to send even more military equipment to fend off the Russians. US President Joe Biden asked Congress for an additional 33 billion dollars (£26.4 billion) to help Ukraine.