Ukraine says Russians failing to advance but well dug in

(Patria) - Russian forces have not advanced along the front lines, but are dug in in heavily mined areas they control, making it difficult for Ukrainian troops to move east and south, Ukrainian officials said.

Russian reports of fighting on the front line say 12 Ukrainian attacks were repelled in the Donetsk region - the focus of Russian advances for months, Reuters reports.

Most Russian military activity has focused on air strikes that damaged grain infrastructure in Ukraine's Danube port of Izmail. Russia's Defence Ministry also said its forces destroyed a Ukrainian naval drone that attempted to attack a Russian warship escorting a civilian vessel in the Black Sea.

Ukrainian forces launched an operation in June to retake occupied areas and have pushed south towards the Sea of Azov to sever the land bridge between occupied eastern Ukraine and the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula.
Kyiv also says it has retaken areas near Bakhmut, an eastern city that Russian forces captured in May after months of fighting.

Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Russian forces were "quite persistently trying to stop our advance in the Bakhmut sector. Without success".

Russian forces, she wrote on Telegram, were reinforcing reserves and equipment in three areas to the north, where heavy fighting has also been recorded in recent weeks.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's National Security Council, said Russian forces had had enough time in months of occupation to prepare defences and lay large minefields.

"The enemy has prepared very thoroughly for these events," he told national television.

"The number of mines in the territory that our troops have retaken is extremely high. On average, there are three, four, five mines per square metre," Danilov said, echoing President Volodymyr Zelensky's claims that progress could be slower than expected because human lives are at stake.

"No one can set deadlines for us, except ourselves... there is no fixed schedule," he said.

"I have never used the term counteroffensive. There are military operations, and they are complexly difficult and depend on many factors," he added.

Russia's Defence Minister, in his account of the fighting, said Ukrainian forces had made unsuccessful attempts to advance in several sectors in the southern and northern parts of the Donetsk region. It also stated that Russian forces had launched attacks on towns around Bakhmut, including Kurdyumovka on the southern outskirts of the city and Chasiv Yar, the first major town to the west.