Russian State TV has shown what it said were wounded Ukrainian fighters receiving treatment at a hospital in the Donetsk region. Source / AP
Russia is firing huge Cold War-era missiles designed to destroy aircraft carriers at Ukraine's military in the Donbas because it has run out of precision rockets, the Ministry of Defence has said.
The five-and-a-half tonne missiles were designed to carry a nuclear warhead and using them as conventional missiles instead is causing massive collateral damage.
"When employed in a ground attack role with a conventional warhead they are highly inaccurate and can therefore cause significant collateral damage and civilian casualties," the MoD said.
Debris hangs from a residential building heavily damaged in a Russian bombing earlier in the war in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, in the Donetsk region. Photo / AP
Since withdrawing from around Kyiv in March, the Russian army has concentrated its main effort on capturing the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
Severodonetsk is the largest town that it does not currently hold in Luhansk - which makes up half of the Donbas - and is the focus of the fiercest fighting.
Front line fighting in the Donbas
Ukrainian forces have withstood a battering from Russia's artillery and air force, which have obliterated the city.
A resident sits on a sofa amid the rubble of a destroyed house after a Russian missile strike in Druzhkivka in eastern Ukraine. Photo / AP
A man sweeps rubble next to a shopping and entertainment mall destroyed after a Russian missiles strike on May 9, in Odessa. Photo / AP
"The only problem in Ukraine is the lack of long-range artillery. If there was enough artillery and ammunition for it, we would push back the enemy's artillery, and I can guarantee that our military would clear the city completely in two days," he said.
Russian officials have also said that there are 400 Ukrainian soldiers and several hundred civilians sheltering in the Azot fertiliser production plant in the city.
Some Ukrainian officials have said they are worried that Azot could become another Azovstal - the steelworks in Mariupol which was the centre of the weeks-long siege.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War said that Russian forces in Severodonetsk "have yet to establish full control over the city".
Relatives of servicemen who died during the Russian Special military operation in Donbas pose for a photo holding portraits of Russian soldiers killed during a fighting in Ukraine. Photo / AP
Away from Donbas it said that Russia's army was preparing its defence around the Kherson region against a Ukrainian counter-offensive that has made some ground over the past couple of weeks.
It also said that Russian forces may have captured a small spur in the northern Black Sea on the border of the Mikhaylov and Kherson.
"If these Russian claims are true, control of the Kinburn Split will allow Russian troops to exert greater control of the northwestern Black Sea coast," it said.
Russia has suffered at least 15,000 fatalities in the 15 weeks since the start of the war, as many casualties as it suffered in the entire 10-year long Soviet campaign in Afghanistan.
Vladimir Putin has banned dissent and any talk of war in Ukraine, preferring to refer to it as a "special operation". This means he has been unable to order a full mobilisation.
Reports from Russia indicate that its army is trying to recruit contract soldiers by placing adverts in social media, on websites and in classified adverts in newspapers.
One advert, on a Russian job-seekers website, advertised for potential soldiers interested in firing rocket-propelled grenades. It offered a salary of around $2600, nearly three times the average salary in Russia.
