Top Ukrainian commander sees new assault on key eastern city
A Russian military helicopter flies past a flock of birds in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Donetsk, a Russian-controlled city of Ukraine, June 28, 2025. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko
Ukraine's top commander said on Saturday that his forces faced a new onslaught against a key city on the eastern front of its war against Russia, while Moscow said it was making progress in another sector farther southwest.
After their initial failed advance on the capital Kyiv in the first weeks after the February 2022 invasion, Russian troops have focused on capturing all of Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. The city of Kostiantynivka has been a major target.
Ukrainian forces have for months defended the city against fierce assaults, with the regional governor urging remaining residents this week to evacuate as infrastructure breaks down.
Top Ukrainian commander Oleksander Syrskyi, writing on Telegram on Saturday, said the area around Kostiantynivka was gripped by heavy fighting.
"The enemy is surging towards Kostiantynivka, but apart from sustaining numerous losses, has achieved nothing," Syrskyi said.
"The aggressor is trying to break through our defences and advance along three operating sectors."
A spokesman for Ukrainian forces in the east, Viktor Trehubov, told the Ukrinform news agency that Kostiantynivka and the city of Pokrovsk to the west were "the main arena of battles and the Kremlin's strategic ambitions".
Syrskyi also said that Ukrainian forces had withstood in the past week a powerful attack near the village of Yablunivka in northeastern Sumy region, where Russian forces have been trying to establish a buffer zone inside the Ukrainian border.
Russia's Defence Ministry, in a report earlier in the day, said Moscow's forces had seized the village of Chervona Zirka -- further southwest, near the administrative border of Dnipropetrovsk region.
Russia's slow advance through eastern Ukraine, with Moscow claiming a string of villages day after day, has resulted in destruction of major cities and infrastructure.
Moscow has insisted that progress towards a settlement of the 40-month-old war depends on Ukraine recognising Moscow's control over four Ukrainian regions -- Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Russian forces control about one-fifth of Ukraine's territory, though they do not fully hold any of the four regions.
Moscow has said in recent weeks that its troops have made advances in areas adjacent to Dnipropetrovsk region, which lies next to both Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. Ukrainian officials have denied those reports. REUTERS
Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
14 minutes ago
- Straits Times
The golden age for employers is ending
Popular discontent with mass immigration is rising, anti-immigrant parties are flourishing and mainstream parties are finally taking note., says the writer. PHOTO: AFP For as long as most of us can remember, business has been able to call on a ready supply of foreign workers. The giants of Silicon Valley, farmers and food processors, hotels and restaurants, house builders and megastores: All have dealt with labour shortages by recruiting immigrants. One result has been an astonishing demographic transformation: 16 per cent of the British population, 20 per cent of the Swedish population, 19 per cent of the German population and 14.3 per cent of the US population were born abroad. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
31 minutes ago
- Straits Times
Russian and US spy chiefs agree to call at any time, SVR director says
Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin attends the opening ceremony of a monument to civilians killed during World War Two, marking the 80th anniversary of lifting of the Leningrad siege, near the village of Zaitsevo in the Leningrad Region, Russia January 27, 2024. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov/Pool/File Photo Russian and US spy chiefs agree to call at any time, SVR director says MOSCOW - Russian spy chief Sergei Naryshkin said in remarks published on Sunday that he had spoken to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Ratcliffe, and that they had agreed to call each other at any time. The CIA and Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the successor to the KGB's famed First Chief Directorate, have long been intense rivals, and each service resorted to public campaigns to recruit agents in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. SVR Director Naryshkin told Kremlin state television reporter Pavel Zarubin that he had a call with the CIA's Ratcliffe and agreed on calling each other to discuss issues of interest. "I had a phone call with my American counterpart and we reserved for each other the possibility to call each other at any time and discuss issues of interest to us," Naryshkin told Zarubin. Naryshkin's last known call with the CIA director took place in March 2025, according to Russian media. The SVR and its predecessors have run some of the most damaging known agents in U.S. history, including Julius Rosenberg, who helped the Soviets obtain nuclear secrets, and the moles Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames who betrayed thousands of U.S. secrets. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
31 minutes ago
- Straits Times
Over a third of people on sinking Tuvalu seek Australia's climate visas
Funafuti, Tuvalu's most populous island, is home to 60 per cent of the population. PHOTO: REUTERS Over a third of people on sinking Tuvalu seek Australia's climate visas – More than one-third of the people in the tiny Pacific nation of Tuvalu, which scientists predict will be submerged by rising seas, have applied for a landmark climate visa to migrate to Australia, according to official figures. Tuvalu's ambassador to the United Nations, Mr Tapugao Falefou, told Reuters on June 29 that he was 'startled by the huge number of people vying for this opportunity', and the small community was interested to learn who the first lot of climate migrants would be. Tuvalu, one of the countries at greatest risk from climate change, which experts say is boosting sea levels, has a population of 11,000 on its nine atolls scattered across the Pacific between Australia and Hawaii. Since applications for Australia's visa lottery opened in June, 1,124 people have registered, with family members bringing the total seeking the visa to 4,052 under the bilateral climate and security treaty. Applications close on July 18, with an annual cap of 280 visas designed to ensure migration to Australia does not cause brain drain from Tuvalu, officials said when the treaty was announced in 2023. The visa will allow Tuvalu residents to live, work and study in Australia, accessing health benefits and education on the same basis as Australian citizens. 'Moving to Australia under the Falepili Union treaty will, in some way, provide additional remittance to families staying back,' Mr Falefou said. By 2050, Nasa scientists project, daily tides will submerge half the main atoll of Funafuti, home to 60 per cent of Tuvalu's residents, where villagers cling to a strip of land as narrow as 20m. That forecast assumes a 1m rise in sea levels, while the worst-case scenario – double that – would put 90 per cent of Funafuti under water. Tuvalu, whose mean elevation is just 2m, has experienced a sea-level rise of 15cm over the past three decades, 1½ times the global average. It has built 7ha of artificial land and is planning more, which it hopes will stay above the tides until 2100. REUTERS Find out more about climate change and how it could affect you on the ST microsite here.
