MOSCOW: Russia has taken control of 12 settlements in Ukraine in the \u200bfirst two weeks of March as part of advances along the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, Russian state-run news agencies quoted top general Valery Gerasimov as saying on Monday.<\/p>\n
In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the country\u2019s armed forces had disrupted Russian plans for an offensive, with Moscow failing to reinforce its troops.<\/p>\n
Gerasimov, the chief of Russia\u2019s General Staff, was speaking during a visit to the southern grouping of forces and pointed to gains around major Ukrainian cities in the \u200cmore than four-year-old conflict, \u200cknown in Russia as a special military operation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe offensive \u200bis \u200cbeing \u2060conducted in \u200ball \u2060directions,\u201d the Russian Defense Ministry quoted him as saying on its Telegram channel.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn two weeks in March, 12 settlements have been liberated by units and military formations of the United Group of troops.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gerasimov said Russian forces were \u201cactively moving toward Sloviansk,\u201d a heavily defended town in eastern Ukraine\u2019s Donetsk region long seen as one of Moscow\u2019s major targets.<\/p>\n
He said Kostiantynivka, another town long subject to Russian pressure, was now 60 percent in Russian hands, \u2060with Ukrainian forces \u201ctaking all possible measures to stop our advance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Kostiantynivka \u200citself, there are street battles in the northwestern \u200cdistrict,\u201d Gerasimov was quoted as saying, adding that assault \u200btroops were pushing their way into \u200cthe city.<\/p>\n
Russian forces were also making headway further south in Zaporizhzhia region, were \u201cactively \u200cadvancing westward\u201d and were also continuing to set up buffer zones in Kharkiv and Sumy regions on the border.<\/p>\n
Zelensky, speaking in his nightly video address after meeting Ukraine\u2019s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Russian assaults had become less intense.<\/p>\n
\u201cUkraine\u2019s defense forces have disrupted Russia\u2019s strategic offensive operation that \u200cthe enemy had planned for March,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough attacks are constant and assaults continue, their intensity and the scale of \u2060the confrontation are \u2060not what Russia had planned and what its command promised to Russia\u2019s political leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zelensky and Syrskyi have pointed in recent weeks to successes in Zaporizhzhia region, recapturing about 400 sq. km. (154 sq. miles) of territory and retaking eight settlements.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s top military offices have repeatedly said their forces have been making constant gains all along the front line.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian DeepState military blog, which relies on open sources to determine the position of both sides, said Russian forces were attempting a breakthrough in Kostiantynivka and had made some gains around Sloviansk.<\/p>\n
The issue of territory remains the key sticking point in slow-moving negotiations aimed at clinching a settlement to the conflict. Russia is \u200bpressing for Ukraine to give up \u200ball of the Donbas (made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions), including areas its forces have not captured, a demand Zelensky has rejected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MOSCOW: Russia has taken control of 12 settlements in Ukraine in the \u200bfirst two weeks of March as part of advances along the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, Russian state-run news agencies quoted top general Valery Gerasimov as saying on Monday. In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the country\u2019s armed forces had …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":95195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95196,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95176\/revisions\/95196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}