Russia has consolidated recent battlefield gains in the east of Ukraine, and is attempting to break through Ukrainian defensive lines before a long-awaited package of US military assistance arrives at the frontline.
On Sunday Russian troops advanced near the city of Avdiivka. They seized two villages and expanded a narrow corridor around the rural settlement of Ocheretyne, which the Russians entered a week ago. Ukrainian security officials described the situation in the Donbas region where Russia is attacking on multiple fronts as “very difficult”. It was “not critical or catastrophic”, they added.
The fighting in Ocheretyne followed a surprise Russian attack. The manoeuvre enabled Russian combat units to bypass a network of Ukrainian trenches and to establish a salient. They have since overrun neighbouring hamlets – Solovyove and Novokalynove – and are attempting to push farther west.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Russia has consolidated recent battlefield gains in the east of Ukraine, and is attempting to break through Ukrainian defensive lines before a long-awaited package of US military assistance arrives at the frontline.
Its recent tactical gains suggest an ambitious plan to encircle the Ukrainian garrison cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in a summer offensive.
It observed: “The arrival of US aid at the front in the coming weeks will allow the Ukrainian forces to address their current materiel constraints and blunt ongoing Russian offensive operations.
Early on Sunday, Russian drones hit a hotel in the southern port city of Mykolaiv, said Vitaliy Kim, the region’s governor.
It used the same formula to describe ballistic missile strikes earlier this year on hotels in Kharkiv, where several foreign journalists and local staff were injured.
There were unconfirmed reports that the Ukrainian military had struck a Russian air defence unit at Cape Tarkhankut, on the western coast of occupied Crimea.
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