Ukraine said it had recaptured a chunk of the factory city of Sievierodonetsk, the focus of a Russian offensive to take the eastern Donbas region, and could hold it for up to two weeks as fighting raged on Saturday.
Sergiy Gaidai, governor of Luhansk province, told national television on Friday that Ukrainian troops had retaken 20% of the territory they had lost in Sievierodonetsk.
It was “not realistic” that the city would fall in the next two weeks even though Russian reinforcements were being deployed, he said.
“As soon as we have enough Western long-range weapons, we will push their artillery away from our positions. And then, believe me, the Russian infantry, they will just run,” said Gaidai.
His claim of Ukrainian advances could not immediately be verified. Reuters reached Sievierodonetsk on Thursday and was able to verify that Ukrainians still held part of the city.
Ukraine’s military said on Saturday Russia had reinforced its troops and had used artillery to conduct “assault operations” in the city. But it said Russian forces had retreated after failed attempts to advance in the nearby town of Bakhmut and cut off access to Sievierodonetsk.
Gaidai said in a social media post that four people were killed in Russian attacks in the region on Friday, including a mother and a child.
In Ukraine’s southern Odesa region on Saturday morning, a missile hit an agricultural storage unit, wounding two people, the regional administration’s spokesman wrote on Telegram.
Two people died and at least two were injured in Russian shelling of civilian infrastructure in the northeastern Kharkiv region on Friday, Ukraine’s Interfax reported, citing emergency services.
The war in Ukraine marked its 100th day on Friday. Tens of thousands have died, millions have been uprooted from their homes and the global economy disrupted since Moscow’s forces were driven back from Kyiv in the first weeks of the conflict.
Russian President Vladimir Putin denied on Friday that Moscow was preventing Ukrainian ports from exporting grain, blaming rising global food prices on the West.
“We are now seeing attempts to shift the responsibility for what is happening on the world food market, the emerging problems in this market, onto Russia,” he said on national television.
He said the best solution would be for Western sanctions on Russia’s ally Belarus to be lifted and for Ukraine to export grain through that country.
Ukrainian officials are counting on advanced missile systems that the United States and Britain recently pledged to swing the war in their favour, and Ukrainian troops have already begun training on them.
While Ukraine’s resistance has forced Putin to narrow his immediate goal to conquering the entire Donbas region, Ukrainian officials said he remains intent on subduing the whole country.
“Putin’s main goal is the destruction of Ukraine. He is not backing down from his goals, despite the fact that Ukraine won the first stage of this full-scale war,” Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar told national television on Friday.
A Russian government spokesman said “certain results have been achieved” in the war and Moscow will continue its military operations until all goals are met.
