Russia claimed to retake a key town in the area from Ukrainian forces. Ukraine’s top military commander has said that its forces would continue to “hold the line.”

Ukraine caught Russia off-guard in its August counter-invasion last year, and succeeded in leveraging a single division of 11,000 soldiers to pin down an estimated 78,000 Russian soldiers, slowing Russia’s advances in east Ukraine, embarrassing Putin and forcing him to reportedly seek the help of 12,000 North Korean mercenaries last November.