Russian forces are pushing for an attack on Sloviansk, a major city in the Donetsk region, according to the Ukrainian military. The attack involves heavy bombardment by Ukrainian defenses, the General Staff said in its daily briefing. “The enemy fired at our troops on the Liman-Siversk border to drive them out of their positions and create the conditions for an attack on Sloviansk,” he said. Some analysts say Russian forces have made modest territorial gains in the region in the past week, but Lyman remains in Ukrainian hands. The General Staff said Russian forces were attacking a large number of cities in the Luhansk region and were trying to improve their positions around the town of Popasna by moving a regular battalion group from Mariupol. A total of 10 attacks in Donetsk and Luhansk were repulsed and Ukrainian forces had destroyed a wide variety of Russian material, he claimed. “The enemy has deployed additional surface-to-air missile systems in the temporarily occupied territories of Luhansk and Zaporizhia,” he said. Three people in Luhansk were killed as heavy bombardment continued in Lysychansk, Zolote and Popasna, according to Serhiy Hayday, head of Luhansk’s military administration. Intense prolonged bombardment prevented the complete evacuation, he said. In areas of southern Ukraine where fighting continues, Russian forces have been looking for weaknesses in Ukrainian defense south of Mykolaiv as they try to extend their control to the entire Kherson region bordering Crimea, the General Staff said. Fierce fighting also broke out in parts of southern Zaporizhia. The regional administration said on Monday that “the enemy tried to break into small groups with the support of armored vehicles, tanks and artillery, but failed.” The cities of Polohy and Orikhiv were among those bombed, he said. He also claimed that Russian forces were forcing farmers “under the barrels of machine guns” to sell grain at a discount. There has also been an increase in attacks on grain warehouses and elevators. Valentyn Reznichenko, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional state administration, said Monday that a grain warehouse had been destroyed in the Synelnykove area.
