- Ukrainian forces are facing waves of assaults by Russian forces on the small salt-mining town of Soledar, Kyiv officials said as Moscow strives to make its first breakthrough in the east for months.
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FIGHTING
* Britain's defence ministry said Russian troops and forces of the Wagner military contractor group were probably now in control of most of Soledar, in the industrial Donbas region, after advances over the past four days.
* Troops from both sides have been taking heavy losses in some of the most intense trench warfare since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly 11 months ago.
* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said no walls have been left standing in Soledar and the land is covered with Russian corpses.
* Russian forces in the past 24 hours mounted eight missile and 31 air strikes, carried out 63 attacks from rocket launchers and hit the cities of Kharkiv, Kherson, Kramatorsk and Ochakiv, Ukraine's Armed Forces said.
* Russia has appointed Colonel-General Alexander Lapin as chief of staff of the country's ground forces, state-owned news agency TASS reported, despite criticism from hawks over his performance in Ukraine.
* Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.
POLITICS/DIPLOMACY/AID
* One of President Vladimir Putin's closest allies said Moscow was now effectively fighting the U.S.-led NATO military alliance in Ukraine and that the West was trying to wipe Russia from the political map of the world.
* Putin's defence minister Sergei Shoigu vowed to build a deeper arsenal of weapons, bolster aviation technology to better evade air defences and improve drone production after a series of battlefield humiliations in Ukraine.
* German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock made a surprise visit to the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv near the Russian border and promised more weapons as well as "concrete offers" to help Kyiv's accession to the European Union.
* NATO must further strengthen its support for Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.
* The Kremlin said new Western deliveries of armoured vehicles to Ukraine would deepen suffering. France, Germany and the United States have all announced new plans to send armoured vehicles to Ukraine.
* Britain has not yet made a final decision on whether to send tanks to Ukraine for the first time to help the country fight Russian forces, the prime minister's spokesperson said.
* The European Union will impose new sanctions on Belarus as it keeps up pressure on Russia to end its Ukraine war and extends measures to those countries that back Moscow, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
QUOTE:
"There isn't one house left intact. Apartments were burning, breaking in half." -Olha, 60, speaking in an evacuee centre in Kramatorsk. She said she had fled Soledar after moving from apartment to apartment as each was destroyed in tank battles.