In spite of Ukraine's current difficulties on the battlefront, President Volodymyr Zelensky says he is confident his country can defeat Russia this year.
"2023 must and will definitely be the year of our victory," Zelensky wrote in a public message on Telegram on Sunday.
At the same time, in his evening video address he admitted that "the situation is very tough," with regard to heavy fighting in the fiercely contested east of the country.
In the Donetsk region, he said, the cities of Bakhmut and Vuhledar in particular continue to be hit by constant Russian shelling. Despite high losses in their own ranks, the Russians did not reduce the intensity of their attacks there.
Three people were meanwhile killed in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson as a result of Russian shelling and six others were injured, local authorities said on Sunday.
The regional capital of the Kherson Oblast, which the Ukrainian army recaptured a few months ago, is being repeatedly shelled by Russian forces.
For their part, the Russian occupiers in the neighbouring region of Zaporizhzhya reported four deaths from Ukrainian shelling. The reports from the war zone are often difficult to verify independently.
Zaporizhzhya, along with Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk, is one of the Ukrainian territories that Russia partially occupied and annexed last year. In addition, Moscow annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014 in violation of international law.
"Russia hopes to prolong the war and exhaust our forces," Zelensky said. "So we have to make time our weapon. We have to speed up events."
The fast delivery of foreign military aid is a key factor in this war, the Ukrainian leader stressed, renewing his call for further arms deliveries beyond the battle tanks recently promised by the West.
