Ukraine’s Armed Forces are conducting a counterofessive operation against the Russian forces on the eastern front of the battlefield, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday (18).
Zelensky described the fighting as intense in the field of Dobropillia and Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region.
“Our forces are depriving the occupant of the opportunity to perform a complete offensive operation, which he had been planning for a long time and which he had,” said the president in a video speech.
Understand the war in Ukraine
Russia began the large -scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and currently has about one fifth from the territory of the neighboring country.
Still in 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin decreed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizehzia.
The Russians slowly advance through the east and Moscow gives no signs of abandoning their main war goals. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, president of the United States, pressures for a peace agreement.
Ukraine has made increasingly bold attacks within Russia and says the operations aim to destroy essential infrastructure of the Russian army.
Putin’s government, in turn, intensified air attacks, including drones offensive.
Both sides deny target civilians, but thousands died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainians.
Thousands of soldiers are also believed to have died on the front line, but neither side releases numbers of military lows.
The United States claim that 1.2 million people were injured or killed in the war.
