© Reuters. An armored military vehicle speeds through Chasiv Yar during heavy fighting on the Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar front, Ukraine, April 9, 2023. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
(Reuters) – Russian forces kept up a barrage of strikes along the front focused on two Ukrainian cities in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine’s military said, while Kiev said it had repelled more than 40 enemy attacks in the past 24 hours.
Fighting was heaviest along the western approaches to Bakhmut, the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces, one of two cities in the east, along with Avdiivka, that Russia’s military has been attacking, said on Sunday. .
Russian forces have been besieging Bakhmut for months in the longest battle in more than a year of war.
In a late-night weekend video, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced Russian airstrikes that coincided with the Orthodox Palm Sunday celebration and said Moscow was further isolating itself from the world.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said a 50-year-old man and his 11-year-old daughter were killed after Russian forces attacked a residential building in Zaporizhzhia in the southeast.
A woman identified as the wife and mother of the victims was pulled from under the rubble.
“This is how the terrorist state marks Palm Sunday,” Zelenskiy said in his speech. “This is how Russia places itself in even greater isolation from the world.”
He praised several units holding positions in the east and said he hoped Palm Sunday next year “will take place in peace and freedom for all our people.”
Most of Ukraine’s 41 million people are Orthodox Christians who celebrate Easter within a week.
Pope Francis, who has been critical of Russia’s war, prayed for peace during Easter events at the Vatican: “Help the beloved Ukrainian people on their path to peace and shed Easter light on the people of Russia”.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces had destroyed a depot with 70,000 tons of fuel near Zaporizhzhia.
The forces destroyed Ukrainian army warehouses storing missiles, ammunition and artillery in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, the ministry added.
Reuters was unable to verify the reports from the battlefield.
RUSSIAN ATTACKS REPELLED
More than 40 enemy attacks have been repelled in the past 24 hours, the General Staff of Ukraine said.
He said Russian forces had launched unsuccessful advances into areas west of Bakhmut, now largely destroyed but with a pre-war population of 70,000. At least 10 towns and villages had come under Russian shelling.
The report said that Russian forces also made no progress in attacks on Avdiivka, the second focus of fighting in the east, and reported widespread Russian shelling in northern regions.
“In the center of Zaporizhzhia and the southern Kherson region, the enemy forces continued to build fortifications,” he said. “Several towns were bombed.”
Officials in the south said Russian planes had used guided bombs against towns in the Kherson region.
The army has said Ukrainian forces will continue to defend Bakhmut against repeated Russian attacks, though Zelenskiy acknowledged last week that if the troops risk being encircled, they could withdraw.
“The enemy is trying to take our fortress-city at all costs,” Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern military command, said on national television.
“Although it is extremely difficult, we are still in control of the situation. Our units are holding back the enemy and dealing maximum damage.”
Control of Bakhmut could allow Russia to directly target Ukrainian defensive lines at Chasiv Yar in the east, and open the way for its forces to advance on two larger cities it has long coveted in the Donetsk region: Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said Russian forces controlled the center of Bakhmut and much of their actions now centered on the city’s train station.
“There is heavy fighting in the center of the city and the enemy is gradually moving to the western outskirts,” Zhdanov said.