Russian forces have used nearly 500,000 munitions in the last week alone on the Eastern front, according to Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, who described the situation as “extremely difficult and tense.”
Hannah Maliar said on YouTube there had been “endless assaults” by the Russians, with more than 9,000 instances of shelling, compared to about 8,000 the previous week.
“This is continuous artillery shelling, through which our soldiers have to pass. Enemy spent almost half a million munitions in the East just last week,” Maliar said.
Russian forced executed several attacks in Donetsk and Luhansk fronts, describing the eastern front lines as the epicenter of hostilities.
Maliar said the Kupyansk direction in the Kharkiv region was “probably the hottest” in fighting and that Russian forces were trying to regain positions they lost last autumn.
“They have such a plan – they want to return the territories they lost in Kharkiv region,” Maliar said.
But she said repeated Russian efforts to break through Ukrainian defenses did not succeed.
Failed Russian efforts: There had also been intensive clashes in the forested areas to the east of Lyman and Russians had “desperately” tried to surround Avdiivka but failed, according to Maliar.
She said Russian forces risk losing their soldiers to “street fights” in those areas and don’t risk going there because they cannot advance.
Difficulties in the south: Ukraine’s armed forced on the main offensive directions of Melitopol and Berdiansk in the south faced quite difficult positions last week. Maliar said Russian forces were “mining positions” in what could be plans for an advance.
Positions attacked: The commander of Ukrainian forces in the south, Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, said late Sunday that Russian forces had attacked Ukrainian positions 21 times and carried out 608 shellings over the past day.
He said that Ukrainian artillery had carried out 1,344 firing missions in the same period and destroyed 21 units of enemy military equipment.
