LVIV, Ukraine - Ukraine's military said Thursday that it recaptured some areas in the south and repelled Russian attacks in the east, as a bloody battle raged at a steel mill in Mariupol where Ukrainian troops are holed up in tunnels and bunkers, fending off a Russian onslaught.Ten weeks into a devastating war, Ukrainian and Russian forces are fighting village by village, as Moscow struggles to gain momentum in the eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas.
Russia switched its focus to that region — where Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for years — after a stiffer than expected resistance bogged its troops down and thwarted its initial goal of overrunning the capital.In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said he hadn’t expected the Russian offensive to "drag on this way." Some Russian troops used ally Belarus as a launch pad for the invasion on Feb.
24, and Lukashenko publicly supported the operation."But I am not immersed in this problem enough to say whether it goes according to plan, like the Russians say, or like I feel it," the authoritarian leader said.
He added it would be "unacceptable" to use nuclear weapons, but he couldn’t say if Russia has such plans.RELATED: Civilians rescued from Mariupol steel plant head for safetyIn addition to heavy shelling of the Donbas, Russian forces also kept up their bombardment of railroad stations and other supply-line targets across the country — part of an effort to disrupt the supply of Western arms, which have been critical to Ukraine's defense.Ukrainian forces said Thursday they made some gains on the border of the southern regions of Kherson and Mykolaiv and repelled 11 Russian attacks in the.