KYIV: Russian forces have advanced over a key waterway in the eastern Ukrainian stronghold of Chasiv Yar, a Ukrainian military official said, marking a setback for Kyiv’s embattled forces.
The town of Chasiv Yar, which had an estimated pre-war population of around 12,000 people, sits on a strategic hilltop and its capture would likely speed Russian advances deeper in the war-battered Donetsk region.
“The enemy managed to break into our line of defense, but there is no critical failure and we are not about to lose Chasiv Yar. Fierce fighting continues now,” a spokesman for Ukraine’s 24th brigade told state-run media.
The spokesman Ivan Petrychak said that while Russian troops had crossed the canal on the eastern edge of the city Ukrainian troops were containing the advance.
Russian forces have been pushing against outnumbered Ukrainian forces in the Donetsk region, which the Kremlin claims is part of Russia.
If Moscow captures the town, it would threaten some of the largest population centers in the industrial region, like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
There have been sporadic reports that Russian forces have previously crossed the canal, which serves as a de facto front line, in Chasiv Yar, and Ukraine has claimed to have fought them back.
Russian drone and artillery attacks meanwhile killed five people, including a child, in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Sumy and Donetsk, officials said Tuesday.
Sumy lies across the border from Kursk in Russia, where Ukrainian troops launched a major offensive in August and have been holding swathes of territory.
“Three people, including one child, died as a result of a night-time attack by enemy drones on residential buildings,” regional authorities said, referring to the city of Sumy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for fresh support from Kyiv’s Western partners to help his forces protect towns and cities.
“This Russian terror can be overcome only through unity with the world,” he said, urging allies to supply more weapons, including air defense systems.
He also called for “investments in weapons production in Ukraine” and “long-range strikes on Russian military logistics, military airfields and bases of Russian troops.”
Separately, emergency services in the eastern Donetsk region, where Russian forces are steadily advancing, said two people had been killed and another wounded by Russian shelling on the town of Myrnograd.
Moscow’s defense ministry claimed its latest advances in the region on Tuesday, saying its forces had captured the abandoned frontline settlement of Novosadove in the Donetsk region.
Ukraine’s air force said 60 Russian drones in total had been detected in Ukrainian airspace overnight and into Tuesday morning and that 42 were destroyed.
Sumy has been under persistent bombardment since the beginning of the war in 2022, when Russian forces briefly captured sectors of the industrial territory before being pushed back.
Authorities said more than two dozen Russian drones had been shot down there overnight.
The Ukrainian operation in Kursk is part of a broader roadmap to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine recently outlined by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In occupied southern Ukraine, Russian-installed officials said a Ukrainian drone attack on the town of Energodar, home to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, killed one person.

KOMARNO, Slovakia: Hungary, Slovakia and Serbia will continue joint efforts to curb illegal migration into the European Union, their leaders said on Tuesday, adding that more EU funds were needed.
Meeting in Komarno, Slovakia, on the Hungarian border, the leaders recognized their efforts to cut the number of migrants, mainly from the Middle East and Africa, who have come via the so-called Balkan route that passes through Serbia and into the EU via Hungary.
Migrants typically move on to richer countries in western Europe, like Germany.
“This year, there are 80 percent fewer migrants (in Serbia) than last year,” Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said after meeting his Slovak and Hungarian counterparts Robert Fico and Viktor Orban.
“We will continue to work together and I believe that the results will be good.”
Illegal migration remains a key political problem across Europe nearly a decade after the crisis in 2015, when around 1 million people arrived in the bloc. Arrivals last year were around a third of that figure.
Orban said asylum applications must be assessed before someone is allowed to enter the EU, saying this model, used in Hungary, was the only one that worked against illegal migration.
Hotspots set up in the last safe countries for migrants, for example in Africa, could be a mass solution, he said.
Italy last week began working with EU non-member Albania by sending migrants there to have their asylum requests processed, a scheme to deter boat crossings which other EU leaders have said could be a model.
Vucic said Serbia, which is not an EU member, would never agree to create hotspots for illegal migrants on its territory.
The number of illegal crossings in the western Balkans fell 79 percent year-on-year to just under 17,000 in the first nine months of 2024, according to data from border agency Frontex.
Fico, who hosted the summit, called the fight against illegal migration an absolute priority and said illegal migration had negative effects on Europe.
“It was a topic of discussion today that in planning the next EU budget after 2027 we have to insist that a substantial part of the budget needs to be devoted to fight illegal migration, because it is seriously threatening us,” he said.