The Ukrainian military reported fewer Russian ground attacks in the last 24 hours, but it said there was still persistent shelling of many places along the frontlines in the country’s east and south.
The overall picture suggests relatively static frontlines, with Russian forces still unable to take towns and villages they first attacked as long as a month ago.
In its operational update for Friday, the General Staff indicated that Russian forces seemed to be regrouping and efforts to take territory were confined to a few areas such as the Popasna in Luhansk region.
Serhii Hayday, head of the military administration in Luhansk, said Popasna “is bombed around the clock. The enemy attacks daily in whole battalions. The city is almost destroyed.”
He said some civilians were still in Popasna but contact with them had been lost. He added that fierce battles had continued around Voyevodivka, where “the settlement has passed from the Russians and back to us a few times.”
Listing a range of other towns in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, such as Severodonetsk and Avdiivka, the General Staff said “the enemy did not conduct active hostilities.”
In the south, the General Staff said that the Russian “did not conduct active hostilities and kept the occupied frontiers, strengthened their air defense systems and electronic warfare; fired on the positions of our troops.”
In the area where the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions meet, the Russians had conducted air reconnaissance, according to the General Staff. Both sides have tried to take territory in this area, with the Russians trying to push north and the Ukrainians trying to threaten Russian control of Kherson city, an important link to Crimea.
On Thursday, Russian journalists reported that the Russian flag had been raised in the town of Snihurivka in the Mykolaiv region.
Reports from the regions also suggest that most Russian activity has been in the form of missile and artillery attacks.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the Kryvyi Rih district had been subject to shelling, but there were no casualties, according to Valentyn Reznichenko, head of the military administration.
Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the Kryvyi Rih city military administration, said “the enemy fired intensely throughout the night along the entire line of contact.”
Meanwhile, a cruise missile has hit Pokrovsky, which is deep inside Dnipropetrovsk, damaging the local power line, according to the regional council.
Russian forces have sporadically aimed missiles at infrastructure in the Dnipropetrovsk region but don’t hold any part of the region, according to the Ukrainian forces.
