New video shows Ukrainian troops using British-designed M777 howitzers to destroy a Russian tank and two infantry fighting vehicles.
Aerial film appears to show the 81st Airmobile Brigade targeting the trucks with long-range weapons.
The Command of the Assault Troops of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said: ‘Gunners of the 81st Brigade of the DShV [Ukrainian Air Assault Forces] destroyed one tank and two infantry fighting vehicles of the Russian invaders.
‘The video shows the successful work of artillery soldiers of the 81st Airmobile Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who, using British M777 155-mm field howitzers, destroyed equipment and manpower of the racists.
‘In particular, one tank and two infantry fighting vehicles of the Russian occupiers – along with their crews – were turned into scrap metal. Death to the Russian occupiers! DShV – Always First! Glory to Ukraine!’
It is the latest blow to Russian forces who have suffered heavy losses to personnel and military hardware in their costly four-month invasion.
Ukraine claims Russia has lost 33,800 personnel, 1,477 tanks, 3,588 armoured combat vehicles, 749 artillery units, 235 multiple launch rocket systems, 98 air defence systems, 216 warplanes, 181 helicopters, 601 drones, 130 cruise missiles, 14 warships, 2,527 motor vehicles and fuel tankers, and 55 units of special equipment.
On the battlefield, Russian forces are trying to take complete control of the eastern Donbas region, parts of which were already held by Russian-backed separatists before the February 24 invasion.
It comes as Ukraine is nervously awaiting a historic decision from the EU on its bid to become a member state, with Volodymyr Zelesnky fearing it could lead to an increase in Russian ‘hostile activity’ this week.
A prime target of Moscow’s eastern assault is the industrial city of Sievierodonetsk.
Russia said on Sunday it had seized Metyolkine, a village on the outskirts, and Russian state news agency TASS reported that many Ukrainian fighters had surrendered there.
Ukraine’s military said Russia had ‘partial success’ in the area.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukrainian TV that a Russian attack on Toshkivka, 20 miles south of Sievierodonetsk, also ‘had a degree of success.’
In Sievierodonetsk itself, a city of 100,000 before the war, Gaidai said Russia controlled ‘the main part’ but not the entire town after intense fighting. Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield accounts.
Both Russia and Ukraine have continued heavy bombardment around Sievierodonetsk ‘with little change to the front line’, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said on Sunday.
In Sievierodonetsk’s twin city of Lysychansk, residential buildings and private houses had been destroyed by Russian shelling, Gaidai said. ‘People are dying on the streets and in bomb shelters,’ he added.
He later said 19 people had been evacuated on Sunday. ‘We are managing to bring in humanitarian aid and evacuate people as best we can,’ Gaidai said.
Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, wrote in a note that ‘Russian forces will likely be able to seize Sievierodonetsk in the coming weeks, but at the cost of concentrating most of their available forces in this small area.’
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the Ukraine conflict could last for years and urged Western governments to continue sending state-of-the-art weaponry to Ukrainian troops, Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported.
‘We must prepare for the fact that it could take years. We must not let up in supporting Ukraine,’ Stoltenberg was quoted as saying.
Russia has said it launched what it calls a ‘special military operation’ to disarm its neighbour and protect Russian speakers there from dangerous nationalists. Kyiv and its allies dismiss that as a baseless pretext for a war of aggression.
The British military assessment said morale for Ukrainian and Russian combat units in the Donbas was likely ‘variable.’
‘Ukrainian forces have likely suffered desertions in recent weeks, however, Russian morale highly likely remains especially troubled. Cases of whole Russian units refusing orders and armed stand-offs between officers and their troops continue to occur,’ the British Ministry of Defence said on Twitter.
In Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv, northwest of Luhansk, Russia’s defence ministry said its Iskander missiles had destroyed weaponry recently supplied by Western countries.
According to a Ukrainian interior ministry official, Russian soldiers were attempting to approach Kharkiv, which had been heavily shelled earlier in the war, and transform it into a “frontline city.”
Western weapons helped Ukrainian forces move six kilometres towards Russian-occupied Melitopol in southern Ukraine, its mayor said in a video uploaded on Telegram from outside the city.
An EU decision in favor of Kyiv’s eventual membership would put Ukraine on track to realize a dream that was out of reach for the former Soviet republic before to the Russian invasion.
‘Whole generations fought for a chance to escape from the prison of the Soviet Union and, like a free bird, to fly to European civilisation,’ the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, said in a statement.
President Zelensky said there had been ‘few such fateful decisions for Ukraine’ as the one it expects from the EU this week.
‘Only a positive decision is in the interests of the whole of Europe,’ he said in his evening address Sunday.
‘Obviously, we expect Russia to intensify hostile activity this week… We are preparing. We are ready,’ he continued.
On Friday, Brussels backed Kyiv’s bid for EU candidate status after the heads of the bloc’s biggest members – France, Germany and Italy – paid a visit to the Ukrainian capital.
Ukraine might be added to the list of countries aspiring for membership as soon as this week, when member state leaders gather in Brussels for a summit.
However, officials and leaders in the bloc warn that even with candidacy status, membership could take some years.