Live: The battle for eastern Ukraine continues as Sweden, Finland move a step closer to joining NATO
Attention turned elsewhere this weekend as Ukraine won the Eurovision Song Contest and both Sweden and Finland moved a step closer to joining NATO.
As the new week begins, the battle for eastern Ukraine continues to be both bloody and uncertain.
See our blog below for a summary of Monday's key developments.
Ukraine was preparing Monday for a new Russian push in the eastern Donbas region, as Kyiv said its army’s counterattack around Kharkiv had gained momentum.
Since failing to take the capital at the beginning of the invasion in late February, control of Donbas has become one of Moscow’s primary objectives - but Western intelligence has predicted its campaign will stall amid heavy losses and fierce resistance.
“We are preparing for new attempts by Russia to attack in Donbas, to somehow intensify its movement in the south of Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.
“The occupiers still do not want to admit that they are in a dead-end and their so-called ‘special operation’ has already gone bankrupt,” he added.
Presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich told local television that Russian troops were being transferred in the direction of Donbas after withdrawing from Kharkiv following the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Kyiv’s troops have made so much progress in the northern region that they have almost reached the border with Russia, according to interior ministry adviser Vadim Denisenko, although air raid sirens still sounded in Kharkiv city early Monday.
Arestovich said the retreating Russian forces were being sent towards Lugansk.
“Their task is to take Severodonetsk,” he said. “Well, something is not working for them.”
Severodonetsk is the easternmost city still held by Ukraine, and its fall would grant the
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