Ukraine said Friday that street battles are raging on at the besieged port city of Mariupol, which Russian forces have not managed to completely capture.
Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesperson Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said active fighting was taking place around Mariupol's Ilyich Steel and Iron Works, as well as in the port area, and that Ukraine is attempting to break Russia's siege of Mariupol.
"The situation in Mariupol is difficult and hard. Fighting is happening right now. The Russian army is constantly calling on additional units to storm the city," Motuzyanyk said.
"But as of now the Russians haven't managed to completely capture it," he told a televised briefing.
Motuzyanyk said Russia had used long-range bombers to attack Mariupol for the first time since its Feb. 24 invasion, and that elsewhere, Russian forces were concentrating efforts on seizing the cities of Rubizhne and Popasna in Ukraine's east.
He called the loss of Russia's lead warship in the Black Sea, the Moskva, significant. But he said he was not authorized to give out information on a factory near the capital Kyiv that Russia's Defense Ministry said it hit with missiles overnight.
Russia said Friday that it had taken full control of Mariupol's Ilyich Steel and Iron Works and pledged more strikes on targets in Kyiv.
Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" to destroy Ukraine's military capabilities and root out what it views as dangerous nationalists, but Ukraine and the West say Russia launched an unprovoked war of aggression.
