Heavy fighting continues in the eastern Donetsk region as Russian forces keep their focus in the areas of Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Mariinka, according to the latest update from the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
More than 30 combat engagements took place in those areas in the past day, the General Staff said Wednesday, noting that Russia conducted several “unsuccessful offensives” in those directions.
Both Ukraine’s General Staff and Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, a commander of joint forces in the country’s south, said Russian forces are on the defensive in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson directions, while the Armed Forces of Ukraine are advancing.
“In the Tavria sector, our army is systematically driving the enemy out of their positions and continues to advance. The successes of the Defense Forces are already noticeable,” Tarnavskyi said in a Telegram post.
Within the past day in Tavria, a town in southern Ukraine, “enemy losses in killed and wounded amounted to almost three companies. Ukraine destroyed and damaged 68 units of enemy military equipment,” Tarnavskyi claimed.
The General Staff said Russian forces were unsuccessful in offensives in the village of Piatykhatky in the Zaporizhzhia region, while they also conducted airstrikes in the areas of Preobrazhenka and Stopnohirsk in the Donetsk region.
In Bakhmut, Ukraine’s acting Commander of the 3rd Assault Brigade Maksym Zhorin claimed Russian troops were unsuccessfully attempting to regain some of their lost positions on the battlefield.
“The result — dead and wounded Russians,” he said.
What Russia says: The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed on Wednesday that its forces attacked units of the Ukrainian army in the southeast of the country near the border of the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, destroying their equipment.
On Belarus: Ukraine’s military also noted that “no signs of (the) formation of offensive groups were detected in Belarus” near the border with Ukraine.
“However, combat training and coordination of the Russian Armed Forces units before their deployment to the areas of combat operations in Ukraine are ongoing at the training grounds of the Republic of Belarus,” the General Staff claimed.
Belarus, one of Russia’s staunchest allies since the invasion of Ukraine, made changes to its constitution renouncing its neutrality on Wednesday.