Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said no one knows how long the war in his country will last but his forces are defying expectations by preventing Russian troops from over-running eastern Ukraine, where the fighting has been fiercest for weeks.
In his daily video address, Mr Zelenskiy said he is proud of the Ukrainian defenders managing to hold back the Russian advance in the Donbas region, which borders Russia and where Moscow-backed separatists have controlled much of the territory for eight years.
“Remember how in Russia, in the beginning of May, they hoped to seize all of the Donbas?” the president said. “It’s already the 108th day of the war, already June. Donbas is holding on.”
After failing to capture the capital Kyiv early in the war, Moscow focused on seizing the parts of the largely Russian-speaking Donbas still in Ukrainian hands, as well as the country’s southern coast.
But instead of securing a swift, decisive takeover, Russian forces were drawn into a long, laborious battle, thanks in part to the Ukrainian military’s use of western-supplied weapons.
Both Ukrainian and Russian authorities said Severodonetsk, an eastern city with a pre-war population of 100,000, remains contested. The city and neighbouring Lysychansk are the last major areas of the Donbas’s Luhansk province not under the control of the pro-Russia rebels.
Leonid Pasechnik, the head of the separatist-declared Luhansk People’s Republic, said Ukrainian fighters remain in an industrial area of the city, including a chemical plant where civilians had taken shelter from days of Russian shelling.
Luhansk governor Serhii Haidai reported on Saturday that a big fire broke out at the plant during hours of Russian shelling.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, a counter-offensive pushed Russians out of parts of the southern Kherson region they took early in the war, according to Mr Zelenskiy.
Moscow has installed local authorities in Kherson and other occupied coastal areas, offering residents Russian passports, airing Russian news broadcasts and taking steps to introduce a Russian school curriculum.
Mr Zelenskiy said that while an end to the war is not in sight, Ukraine should do everything it can so the Russians “regret everything that they have done and that they answer for every killing and every strike on our beautiful state”.
The Ukrainian leader asserted that Russia has suffered about three times as many military casualties as the number estimated for the Ukrainian side, adding: “For what? What did it get you, Russia?”
There are no reliable independent estimates of the war’s death toll so far.
At the Vatican on Sunday, Pope Francis urged the faithful in St Peter’s Square to keep praying and fighting for peace in Ukraine.
“The passing of time does not cool our pain and our concern for that battered population,” Francis said. “Please, let’s not get used to this tragic reality. Keep it close to the heart.”
Meanwhile, at a defence conference in Singapore on Sunday, Chinese government minister General Wei Fenghe said Beijing continues to support peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, and hopes the US and its Nato allies have discussions with Russia “to create the conditions for an early ceasefire”.
He added: “China will continue to play a constructive role and contribute our share to easing tensions and realising a political resolution of the crisis.”
He suggested that nations supplying weapons to Ukraine are hindering peace by “adding fuel to the fire”, and stressed China had not provided any material support to Russia during the war.
The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, said in its latest assessment that Ukrainian intelligence suggests the Russian military is planning “to fight a longer war”.
The institute cited the deputy head of Ukraine’s national security agency as saying that Moscow had extended its war timeline until October, with adjustments to be made depending on any successes in the Donbas.
The intelligence “likely indicates the Kremlin has, at a minimum, acknowledged it cannot achieve its objectives in Ukraine quickly and is further adjusting its military objectives in an attempt to correct the initial deficiencies in the invasion of Ukraine”, the think tank said. — AP