Russia Makes Advances on Several Fronts Simultaneously

On Thursday, Russian forces are advancing forcefully into eastern Ukraine and are at the gates of Severodonetsk in Lugansk.

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"Russia has occupied 95 percent of the Lugansk territory," said Serhiy Gaidi, head of the Ukrainian military administration in the Donbas region.

"The enemy's main efforts are focused on taking full control of Liman and trying to improve the tactical situation near Severodonetsk and Avdiivka," the Ukrainian military admitted.

This happened a few hours after the Lugansk People's Forces announced they had successfully blocked the roads of access to these cities, which prevents the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops and the arrival of supplies.

Eduard Basurin, the spokesman for the militias of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, stressed that the Ukrainian resistance on the outskirts of Liman city "will not last long."

The Ukrainian Army also admitted the strong pressure that the militias exert from the southern flank towards the outskirts of Avdiivka, the capital city of Donetsk, which has been the front line of the Ukrainian front in Donbas since 2014.

In the north of the country, Russian forces intensified their offensive towards the towns of Bachivsk and Krasnopillya in the Sumy region, and towards the city of Zarichche in the Chernihiv region. In the south of the country, the Russians continued to improve their positions towards the Mykolaiv region and to seek access to the administrative borders of Kherson.

"At the moment the fighting has reached its maximum intensity. The enemy assaults the positions of our troops in several directions at once. An extremely difficult and long stage of fighting awaits us. We must understand that this is a war and losses on our side are inevitable," said Ukraine's Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar.

"We have lost momentum with respect to the Russian military. They accumulated reserves before us. We are lagging behind, which makes the situation extremely difficult," adviser to the Ukrainian presidency Oleksiy Arestovych lamented, warning that the situation could worsen.