KYIV: Russian forces focused their assaults in eastern Ukraine near the embattled town of Kurakhove on Friday as Ukrainian troops tried to hold the line at a critical juncture of the war, Kyiv said.
The Russians also pressed towards Ukraine's rail hub of Pokrovsk, about 33 km north of Kurakhove, in an attempt to open new lines of attack, disrupt Ukrainian logistics, and take control of the rest of the eastern Donetsk region 2-1/2 years on from Russia's invasion of its neighbour.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has praised his troops for holding their positions in Pokrovsk and Kurakhove, the two most difficult sectors in the east.
Ukraine's forces are stretched thin but the military said they had repelled 64 assaults near Kurakhove in the past day, the most intense fighting there this month. The Ukrainian military also reported repelling 36 attacks near Pokrovsk on the same day.
Together, the action on these fronts accounted for more than two-thirds of about 140 clashes reported along over 1,000 km of front lines in the northeast, east and south of the country in the last day.
Kyiv launched a cross-border assault into Russia's Kursk region in early August in the hope of diverting forces from the eastern front. The Ukrainians made rapid initial gains before stalling, while the situation around Pokrovsk has remained perilous.
In Ukraine's northern Sumy region, a Russian guided bomb attack on Friday killed two people and injured six others, including a four-year-old child, local authorities said. Ukraine used Sumy, which borders Kursk, as a staging ground for its incursion into Russia in August.
The settlement of Yampil was hit with four guided bombs, Sumy regional prosecutors said on Telegram. The attack damaged residential houses and a clinic, and cut power supplies, the regional military administration said.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will meet U.S. President Joe Biden for talks on Friday on the next steps in supporting Ukraine, centring on whether to allow Western missiles to be used to hit targets in Russia.
President Vladimir Putin said that the West would be directly fighting with Russia if it allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory with Western-made long-range missiles, a move he said would alter the nature and scope of the conflict.
Focus now turns to talks in Washington after a joint fact-finding trip to Kyiv by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy earlier this week during which both allies offered new support for Ukraine, but no commitment on the missile use.
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