Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday said there would soon be “good news” for Ukraine as heavy fighting with Russia continues in the southern and eastern regions of the country.
Zelensky said in an address that Ukrainian forces were holding the line and pushing back against Russian troops in key battles.
“Generally, we are strengthening our positions all over the frontline, reducing the invaders’ capabilities, destroying their logistics, and preparing good news for Ukraine,” Zelensky said.
Much of the heaviest fighting is taking place around the towns of Avdiivka and Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region.
Ukraine has repelled ongoing attacks from Russian troops in those towns and others in the Donbas, according to an update from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Russia has hammered cities in the Donbas with missile strikes, targeting civilian infrastructure and housing. The relentless strikes are part of an aerial onslaught employed by Russian President Vladimir Putin amid his mounting losses in the war.
On Wednesday, Zelensky noted the missile attacks and said, “Our soldiers who hold positions in these directions in Donetsk region are simply heroes.”
“The craziness of the Russian command is now most visible there: day after day for months, they drive people there to death, concentrate the maximum power of artillery strikes there,” the Ukrainian leader said his address.
In the southern region of Kherson, Ukrainian troops are pushing forward against a crumbling Russian line, according to an update this week from the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies. But Ukrainian forces are facing stiff resistance in the towns of Davydiv Brid and Dudchany.
Russia is reportedly bracing for a battle over the regional capital of Kherson, with Ukraine looking to take back the first major city captured by Russian forces at the start of the war eight months ago.
Ukraine has won a number of decisive victories against Russia after its invasion, pushing invading troops back from the western region of the country over the spring and then launching a massive counterattack taking back swaths of the northeast and the south last month.
Zelensky this week said Ukraine will eventually take back the Crimean Peninsula and all the territory Putin has illegally annexed.