Ukrainian forces approach a heavily guarded eastern city

According to the authorities, Ukrainian forces are approaching Kreminna, a fiercely defended city in the east of the country, a further sign that the northern province of lugansk it remains one of the most contested sectors of the country’s battlefield.

“The situation is difficult, acute,” he said. Volodymyr ZelenskyPresident of Ukraine, on Kreminna and other areas of the Donbass region in his late night speech on Monday.

“The occupiers are using all the resources at their disposal – and they are important resources – to squeeze at least Any advance“.

The campaign to recapture Kreminna began in the fall, around the time Ukraine captured the town of Lyman following an invasion of the northeastern Kharkiv region that pushed Russian forces back towards the Ukrainian border.

Since then, the sides have fought a series of battles and artillery duels on roads and small settlements around the town of Kreminna, as well as further north-west at the town of Svatove.

Russian forces took both posts at the start of their 10-month invasion of Ukraine.

The recapture of these two cities and a third, Starobilsk, would allow Ukrainian forces to advance towards the Russian border.

It would also give them control of a triangle of highways that give access to two larger cities further south, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, which fell into Russian hands during the summer.

Regional officials said the campaign had focused on bigger cities, although Zelenskyy has repeatedly said Ukraine wants to claim the whole territory seized by Russia since 2014, including the peninsula of Crimea.

“There is fighting near the city,” Kreminna’s regional military governor, Serhiy Haidai, said on a national television program on Monday.

He added that, in response to military pressure, part of the Russian command in the city had withdrawn to the small town of Rubizhne, a few kilometers southeast.

There has been no independent confirmation of battlefield developments, but Vitaly Kiselyov, a senior official in the self-proclaimed Luhansk republic, told a Russian state television channel on Monday that the situation around Kreminna and Svatove remained “very tense.“

Luhansk, a region controlled almost entirely by Russia, is one of four provinces Moscow illegally annexed in October.

In recent weeks, Russian forces have built a series of defensive barriers near Kreminna and other parts of the country’s rugged front lines with the aim of slowing down their adversary.

In addition, Russia has cut pontoon bridges over the Seversky Donets River, which flows north of Luhansk, the province’s military administration reported on social messaging app Telegram on Monday.

The loss of Kherson capped a series of territorial setbacks for the Kremlin, but according to the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War, Russia is gathering their forces north of Luhansk for an offensive that would aim to extend its control in the region and then potentially push into Kharkiv province.

To do so, it is prioritizing the mobilization of troops to defend Kreminna and Svatove over operations in other parts of the Donbass region.

The institute cited Ukrainian military reports of increased Russian movements of troops, military equipment and munitions in the area.

The institute said short-term Russian success seemed unlikely given the difficult terrain and “very limited” offensive capability of Moscow’s forces.

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