KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops engaged in hand-to-hand combat as they drove Russian forces out of a huge processing plant in the town of Vovchansk in Ukraine’s northeast that had been occupied for four months, officials said Tuesday.
The plant, a partly steel structure with some 30 buildings, had been a Russian stronghold in the Kharkiv border region since May when Russia sought to further stretch Ukraine’s weary forces by launching a fresh push in the area.
Taking back the plant was likely intended to demonstrate that Ukraine is not giving up the fight despite being outmanned and outgunned by the Russian army. The accomplishment coincided with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip to the United States where he is looking to ensure continuing foreign support for his country with the war deep into its third year.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to grind down Ukraine’s appetite for the fight and sap the West’s support for Kyiv by drawing out the conflict. Russian forces have been creeping forward on the battlefield this year but the progress has been costly. The U.K. Defense Ministry estimates more than 1,000 Russian troops are being killed or wounded each day.
A statement from Ukrainian Military Intelligence said its units recaptured the Vovchansk plant after fierce fighting “in densely built-up conditions.”
The Russian onslaught has reduced Vovchansk, and many other Ukrainian towns and villages, to smoking piles of rubble and bombed-out residential buildings.
Ukraine’s daring incursion last month into Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces are holding ground, was launched in part to ease pressure in the northeast by forcing Russia to divert its forces.
Russia is waging a war of attrition, relentlessly bombing towns and cities while trying to tear holes in Ukrainian defenses at places along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, especially in the eastern Donbas region.
In Kharkiv city, the region’s capital, at least three people were killed and 28 were injured Tuesday in a Russian glide bomb attack, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said.
“People are still trapped under the rubble. One of the multi-story buildings suffered a direct hit. The rescue operation continues,” Syniehubov wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian forces are also under severe pressure in the town of Vuhledar, one of a key belt of strongholds in the Donetsk region which along with Luhansk makes up the partly occupied Donbas.
Russian forces are obliterating Vuhledar with glide bombs while infantry units advance on the flanks in a bid to encircle the town, according to Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Combating Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
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