Front lines shift in Donbas as Ukraine mounts counteroffensive
(Reuters) - The front lines in the Ukraine war had shifted on Sunday as Russia made some advances in the fiercely contested eastern Donbas region and the Ukrainian military waged a counteroffensive near the strategic Russian-held city of Izium. In the west of Ukraine near the Polish border, missiles destroyed military infrastructure overnight and were fired at the Lviv region from the Black Sea, Ukrainian officials said.
(Reuters) - The front lines in the Ukraine war had shifted on Sunday as Russia made some advances in the fiercely contested eastern Donbas region and the Ukrainian military waged a counteroffensive near the strategic Russian-held city of Izium.
In the west of Ukraine near the Polish border, missiles destroyed military infrastructure overnight and were fired at the Lviv region from the Black Sea, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukrainian forces have notched up a string of successes since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, forcing Russia's commanders to abandon an advance on Kyiv and then making rapid gains in the northeast to drive them out of the second-biggest city Kharkiv.
Since mid-April, Russian forces have focused much of their firepower on Donbas after failing to take the capital.
An assessment by British military intelligence issued on Sunday said Russia had lost about a third of the ground combat force deployed in February. Its Donbas offensive had fallen "significantly behind schedule" and was unlikely to make rapid advances during the coming 30 days, the assessment said.On Saturday night, Ukraine received a morale boost with victory in the Eurovision Song Contest, a triumph seen as sign of the strength of popular support for Ukraine across Europe Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy welcomed the win, but said the situation in Donbas remained very difficult and Russian forces were still trying to salvage some kind of victory in a region wracked by conflict since 2014. "They are not stopping their efforts," he said Moscow's invasion, which it calls a "special operation" to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists, has jolted European security. Kyiv and its Western allies say the fascism assertion is a baseless pretext for an unprovoked war of aggression.