Russia lost a third of its forces in Ukraine
Russia has lost around a third of the ground forces it deployed to Ukraine and its offensive in the Donbas region "has lost momentum and fallen significantly behind schedule", British military intelligence said yesterday.
"Despite small-scale initial advances, Russia has failed to achieve substantial territorial gains over the past month whilst sustaining consistently high levels of attrition," the British defence ministry said on Twitter.
"Russia has now likely suffered losses of one third of the ground combat force it committed in February."
It said Russia was unlikely to dramatically accelerate its rate of advance over the next 30 days.
The front lines in the Ukraine war had shifted yesterday as Russia made some advances in the Donbas 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 February 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.
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 Zelensky 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, reports Reuters.
Keeping up pressure on Izium and Russian supply lines will make it harder for Moscow to encircle battle-hardened Ukrainian troops on the eastern front in the Donbas.
Izium straddles the Donets river, about 120 km from Kharkiv on the main highway heading southeast.
"The hottest spot remains the Izium direction," regional governor Oleh Sinegubov said in comments aired on social media.
"Our armed forces have switched to a counteroffensive there. The enemy is retreating on some fronts and this is the result of the character of our armed forces."
But Ukraine's military acknowledged setbacks in an update yesterday morning: "Despite losses, Russian forces continue to advance in the Lyman, Sievierodonetsk, Avdiivka and Kurakhiv areas in the broader Donbas region."
Both sides claimed success in military strikes in Donbas.
The Ukrainian military said there was no let-up yesterday in Russia's bombardment of the steel works in the southern port of Mariupol, where a few hundred Ukrainian fighters are holding out weeks after the city fell into Russian hands.
Zelensky said talks were underway seeking a way to evacuate wounded soldiers from Mariupol in return for the release of Russian prisoners of war.
A large convoy of cars and vans carrying refugees from the ruins of Mariupol arrived in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia after nightfall on Saturday after waiting days for Russian troops to allow them to leave.
Iryna Petrenko, a 63-year-old in the convoy, said she had stayed initially to take care of her 92-year-old mother, who subsequently died.
"We buried her next to her house, because there was nowhere to bury anyone," she said.
Comments