(Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had reduced the potential of Russian troops to launch attacks in the Donetsk region on the eastern front of the more than 2 1/2-year-old war.
Zelenskiy, speaking in his nightly video address after conferring with commanders, said the military was doing its utmost “for the resilience of our combat brigades”.
“At this time, the Ukrainian Defense Forces have managed to reduce the offensive potential of the occupiers in the Donetsk region,” he said.
The situation, he said, remained “critically difficult with tough fighting every day” in the two sectors of the eastern front most exposed to Russian attacks – near the towns of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove.
Ukraine’s operation in southern Russia’s Kursk region, which began last month, succeeded in getting the Russian military to divert resources away from the eastern front, Zelenskiy said.
And the capture of Russian troops had bolstered Ukraine’s POW “exchange fund” to be used as a bargaining chip to facilitate exchanges with Moscow.
“In this theater we managed to divert close to 40,000 Russian soldiers,” he said. “Our active measures continue.”
The president also said one person had died in a Russian attack on an elderly home in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, an area often subject to Russian abuse.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Bogdan Kochubey; Editing by Mark Porter and Alistair Bell)