Kramatorsk (Ukraine): Russian troops pushed farther into a key eastern Ukrainian city and fought street by street with Kyiv's forces Monday in a battle the mayor said has left the city completely ruined and driven tends of thousands from their homes.
Military analysts painted the battle as part of a race against time for the Kremlin, which they said wants to complete its capture of the industrial Donbas region before more Western arms arrive to bolster Ukraine's defences.
Weapons from the West have already helped Kyiv's forces thwart a Russian advance on the capital in the early weeks of the war. That failure forced Moscow to withdraw, regroup, and pursue a more limited objective of seizing the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists already held swaths of territory and have been fighting Ukrainian troops for eight years.
In recent days, the fighting has focused on Sievierodonetsk in a battle Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called indescribably difficult. Relentless Russian artillery barrages have destroyed critical infrastructure and damaged 90% of the buildings, and power and communications have been largely cut to a city that was once home to 100,000 people.
The number of victims is rising every hour, but we are unable to count the dead and the wounded amid the street fighting, Mayor Oleksandr Striuk told The Associated Press in a phone interview, adding that Moscow's troops advanced a few more blocks toward the city center.
The Ukrainian military said Russian forces reinforced their positions on the northeastern and southeastern outskirts of Sievierodonetsk, 145 kilometers (90 miles) south of the Russian border in an area that is the last pocket of Ukrainian government control in Luhansk province.