Ukraine says it has lost up to 3,000 troops in Russian invasion so far as cities hit by more explosions

Ukraine’s president has said that up to 3,000 troops have been killed so far in seven weeks of war with Russia.

Russia bombed Lviv and struck Kyiv with missiles on Saturday, hitting a factory that repairs tanks. The attack followed the sinking of the flagship of Moscow’s Black Sea fleet on Thursday, after which Russia promised it would launch more long-range attacks on Ukraine.

Ukraine said one of its missiles had caused the Moskva to sink, but Moscow said the ship had sunk while being towed in stormy seas after a fire it said was caused by an explosion of ammunition, and that more than 500 sailors had been evacuated.

The United States believes the Moskva was hit by two Ukrainian missiles and that there were Russian casualties, although a senior US official said the numbers were unclear.

Holding out in Mariupol

Home to 400,000 people before Russia’s invasion, the city of Mariupol has been reduced to rubble. Thousands of civilians have died, and tens of thousands remain trapped.

Ukraine’s military said that Russia’s navy was active in the Sea of Azov in an effort to block the city’s port, where ground fighting has intensified as Ukraine said it was attempting to break Russia’s siege.

“The situation in Mariupol is difficult and hard. Fighting is happening right now,” Ukraine’s defence ministry spokesperson Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told a briefing. “The Russian army is constantly calling on additional units to storm the city.”

He said the Russians had not completely captured the port city, but if they did it would be the first large Ukrainian city to come under their control.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had captured the city’s Illich steel works, but the report could not be confirmed. Ukrainian defenders are mainly believed to be holding out in Azovstal, another huge steel works.

Both plants are owned by Metinvest, an enterprise belonging to Ukraine’s richest businessman, which is the backbone of the country’s industrial east. The company said it would never let its enterprises operate under Russian occupation.

‘Evacuate while still possible’

Russia has been sending additional troops to try to drive Ukrainian forces out of the Donbas, a region covering two provinces in the southeast, which Moscow demands must be fully ceded to the pro-Russian separatists it has backed since 2014.

Ukraine says it has so far held off Russian advances there, although one person was killed and three were wounded in shelling in Luhansk, one of the two provinces where Russia is trying to advance, governor Serhiy Gaidai said in an online post.

A gas pipeline was damaged on the front line close to the towns of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, which were without gas and water, governor Gaidai said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

“Evacuate, while it is still possible,” he said. Buses were ready for those willing to leave.

‘Significant’ victories

Ukraine has so far gained the upper hand in the early phase of a war that many western military experts predicted it would quickly lose.

President Zelensky has claimed that between 19,000 and 20,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war so far, while Moscow said in its latest casualty report in March that 1,351 Russian soldiers had been killed and 3,825 wounded.

The Ukrainian president said the military situation in the south and east was “still very difficult”, while praising the work of his armed forces.

“The successes of our military on the battlefield are really significant, historically significant. But they are still not enough to clean our land of the occupiers. We will beat them some more,” he said in a late-night video address, calling again for allies to send heavier weapons and for an international embargo on Russian oil.

President Zelensky has appealed to US president Joe Biden for the United States to designate Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism”, a status already accorded to North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Syria, The Washington Post reported, citing sources familiar with the conversation between the two presidents.

A White House spokesperson responded by saying: “We will continue to consider all options to increase the pressure on Putin.”