Live: Fighting rages near Donetsk as Russia’s Donbas offensive grinds on

Issued on: 11/08/2022 – 06:39Modified: 11/08/2022 – 06:43

06:10am: Fighting rages near Donetsk as Russia’s Donbas offensive grinds on

Heavy fighting raged around the eastern Ukrainian town of Pisky on Thursday as Russia pressed its campaign to seize all of the industrialised Donbas region.

An official with the Russia-backed Donetsk People’s Republic said Pisky, on the frontlines just 10 km (6 miles) northwest of provincial capital Donetsk, was under control of Russian and separatist forces.

“It’s hot in Pisky. The town is ours but there remain scattered pockets of resistance in its north and west,” the official, Danil Bezsonov, said on Telegram.

Ukrainian officials denied that the heavily fortified town, a key to the defence of Donetsk, had fallen. Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield accounts.

The Donbas region comprised of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces became Moscow’s main objective after it failed to seize the capital Kyiv at the start of the war in February. Luhansk is now almost completely under Russian control but Donetsk is still holding out.

5:27am: Russian-backed separatist leader says Azov trial to begin this summer

Denis Pushilin, head of the Russian-backed separatist administration in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region said on Wednesday that a trial of captured personnel from Ukraine’s Azov Regiment would take place by the end of the summer, likely in the city of Mariupol.

The Azov Regiment, a unit of Ukraine’s national guard with far-right and ultranationalist origins, garnered international attention for its resistance to the Russian siege of Mariupol’s vast steelworks.

After fighting for weeks from the bunkers and tunnels below the steel works, hundreds of Azov fighters surrendered in May to Russian-backed forces.

Though the Azov prisoners have not yet been formally charged, on Aug. 2 Russia’s supreme court ruled the regiment was a terrorist organisation, clearing the way for captured fighters to be charged as such.

Ukraine, which has itself tried and convicted a string of Russian soldiers for war crimes committed against civilians, says the Azov captives are prisoners of war, deserving of protection under the Geneva Conventions.

02:20am: Russian advance stalls in Donbas

“The Russians continue to press in the Donbas region, but for the last month or so, they’ve made very little progress,” reports FRANCE 24’s Chief Foreign Editor Rob Parsons. “We’re talking about kilometres in single figures. It’s very hard and they’re taking heavy losses.”

The Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kherson region has further complicated the military situation for Russia, Parsons explains:

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(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)