Russia and Ukraine battle over Donetsk towns in fight for east

There were fierce clashes between Ukrainian and Russian troops on Thursday as forces loyal to Moscow attempted to dislodge Ukrainian fighters from their positions around the cities of Avdiivka and Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region. While the city of Donetsk itself has been controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014, the Ukrainian army continues to hold large areas of the surrounding Donetsk region, though Russian forces say they are now making significant territorial gains. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Thursday that its forces had successfully fought off Russian attacks north-east and east of the Donetsk region towns of Soledar and Bakhmut, while they said fighting was ongoing to the south of Bakhmut. However, Brigadier General Olexiy Hromov, deputy chief of the Ukrainian General Staff, confirmed that Ukrainian troops had been forced to withdraw from the village of Semyhirya and their positions south-east of Avdiivka. The general staff report also said that Ukrainian forces had repelled Russian advances to the north of the city of Sloviansk in the Donetsk region, as well as in the Kherson and Kharkiv regions, despite Russian aerial attacks and the shelling of dozens of Ukrainian positions along the front line. Ukraine's second city Kharkiv was shelled by Russian artillery on Thursday evening, according to the city's mayor, Ihor Terekhov. Initial reports said that three people were injured in the attacks. 'I ask everyone to stay in shelters and exercise maximum caution!' Terekhov wrote. While Ukrainian forces have successfully managed to push Russian troops back from Kharkiv, the city remains in range of Russian artillery. In the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, Ukrainian partisans reportedly shot and injured the mayor of Bilovodsk and his deputy for alleged collaboration, according to Luhansk regional governor Serhii Haidai. Meanwhile, less than a week after dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in an attack on a prison in Olenivka, near the city of Donetsk, UN Secretary General António Guterres announced he would be initiating a fact-finding investigation into the incident, following a request from both Russia and Ukraine. Moscow and Kyiv have each blamed the other for the attack, with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claiming on Thursday that it had been 'absolutely proven' that Ukraine was responsible for the deaths of its own soldiers. While Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenksy did not comment on the Russian accusations directly, he did react furiously to an Amnesty International report that accused the Ukrainian military of violating international law in its use of residential buildings, schools, and hospitals in its ground war against invading Russian troops. Zelensky accused Amnesty of victim blaming in his Thursday evening video address, adding that anyone doing such a thing 'cannot but realize that it helps the terrorists.' Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov was just strident in his condemnation of the report, writing on Facebook that any attempt 'to question the right of Ukrainians to resist genocide, to protect their families and homes' was a 'perversion.' As Kyiv continued to lobby the West for more weapons to fight off the Russian invasion, North Macedonia returned four Russian Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jets it had acquired from Ukraine in 2001 to Kyiv, according to reports. The country also donated some of its Soviet-built T-72 tanks in a show of solidarity with Zelensky's government.