WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Ukraine reports fierce fighting in northeast
A senior Ukrainian official reported heavy fighting in the northeast of the country on Sunday, with Kyiv's forces holding their lines and making gains in some areas.
Russia's military said it had halted Ukrainian forces in the northeast. The military also said it brought down down three Ukrainian drones which had tried to strike Moscow and damaged a high-rise building reported to house government offices.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described Sunday as "a good day, a powerful day" at the front, particularly near Bakhmut, where Ukrainian forces say they are retaking ground lost when Russian forces took the city in May.
Ukraine did not directly claim responsibility for the drone attacks but Zelenskiy said the war was "gradually returning to Russia's territory - to its symbolic centres".
Russian forces launched the latest in a series of night-time air attacks, striking what officials said was a "non-residential building" in the northeastern city of Kharkiv. The hit started a fire but there were no reports of casualties.
Zelenskiy reported that the death toll in a Russian strike on a school in the northern town of Sumy on Saturday had risen to two after rescue teams cleared rubble from the site.
Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Russian forces were "trying to drive us out" of elevated positions in the northeast occupied by Moscow after its February 2022 invasion, but retaken later by Ukrainian troops.
The Russians' key task, she told national television, was to "divert our forces from the Bakhmut area, where we have a successful offensive".
"They have attacked endlessly this week. But our troops resist the attacks and sometimes push them back with heavy losses," she said.
Maliar said the Russians had suffered "no fewer losses than during the heated battles in Bakhmut", which fell to Russian forces after more than 10 months of fighting.
Ukraine last month launched a counter offensive focusing on a southward campaign to drive a wedge between Russian forces holding territory in the east and the annexed Crimean peninsula, and on winning back ground around Bakhmut.
But fierce fighting has also flared around the Ukrainian -held northeastern towns of Kupiansk and Lyman.
Maliar said Russian forces were also "tenaciously trying to seize back" areas on the southern front taken by Ukraine.
Ukraine, she said, had recaptured 200 sq. km. (77 sq. miles) in the south, but advances were limited by entrenched Russian positions and mines.
Russia's Defence Ministry, in its daily account of military activity, said its forces had spotted and deployed rockets to destroy an аrmoured brigade of Ukrainian troops near Svatove, a key Russian-held town in the northeast.
Russian forces, it said, had also repelled four Ukrainian attacks near the town of Lyman, further south.
The battlefield accounts could not be independently verified.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Russia’s Battlegroup South helicopters destroy tank, two armored personnel carriers
Army aviation helicopter crews destroyed a tank and two armored personnel vehicles, including a US-made M113, in the Donetsk People's Republic settlements of Kleshcheevka and Andreevka near Artemovsk, head of the group’s press center Vadim Astafyev told TASS.
"The aviation forces of the Battlegroup South attacked four points of temporary deployment of Ukrainian Armed Forces units in the Soledar-Artemovsk direction. In addition, the crews of army aviation helicopters destroyed a tank and two armored personnel carriers, one of them a US M113, near the settlements of Kleshcheevka and Andreevka," he stated.
He also added that the artillery of Russia’s Battlegroup South hit an ammunition depot and a launch site for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the areas of the settlements of Krasnoye and Belaya Gora in the Donetsk People's Republic.
"Special forces units of Russia’s Battlegroup South identified and then destroyed by artillery fire three infantry groups with a total strength of up to 14 Ukrainian servicemen, a machine-gun crew, a self-propelled artillery mount, and a mortar in their positions near the settlements of Dyleyevka, Ozaryanovka, Spornoye, Pobeda and Maryinka," he added.
** Russian Navy to receive 30 combat ships this year — Putin
Russia persistently builds up the might of its Navy that will receive 30 combat ships of various classes this year alone, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the Main Naval Parade on the occasion of Russia’s Navy Day on Sunday.
"Today Russia confidently implements its large-scale objectives of the national maritime policy and persistently builds up the might of its Navy. This year alone, 30 warships of various classes will join it," the Russian leader said.
The combat ships that have entered service with the Russian Navy include the missile corvette Merkury named in honor of the Black Sea Fleet’s sailing ship that gained its glory in the 1828-1829 Russo-Turkish War, the head of state pointed out.
"It is good that the tradition of giving its name to Russian Navy ships has been revived. The St. George’s naval flag was raised aboard the new Merkury as a sign of our preserved naval traditions, a symbol of courage, valor and steadfastness of naval sailors," Putin said, stressing that "these qualities are displayed in full today as well."
This year, Russia’s Main Naval Parade on the Neva River and in the Kronshtadt roadstead involved 45 combat ships, gunboats and submarines of the Northern, Pacific, Baltic and Black Sea Fleets and about 3,000 troops.
Reuters/Tass