On Thursday, Ukrainian troops claimed to have advanced in fierce street fighting in the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk. However, they stated that the only way to turn the tide was with heavier artillery to counter Russia's tremendous firepower.

The struggle among the ruins of the little industrial city of Sievierodonetsk has become one of the deadliest of the conflict, as Russia has concentrated its invasion force there.

In the province of Kherson in the country's southwestern region, the Ukrainian military claimed to have seized new territory during a counterattack.

Sievierodonetsk and its twin city Lysychansk, located on the opposite bank of the Siverskyi Donets, are the final Ukrainian-held portions of Luhansk Province, which Moscow seeks to take as one of its primary war targets.

In a rare dispatch from Sievierodonetsk, the commander of a battalion of the Ukrainian Svoboda National Guard, Petro Kusyk, stated that the Ukrainians were luring the Russians into street fighting in order to neutralize their artillery superiority.

"Yesterday was a success for us; we launched a counteroffensive and pushed them back one or two blocks in some locations. In others, they only pushed us back by one or two buildings," he claimed in a television interview.

He stated that his forces had a "catastrophic" lack of counter-battery weaponry to fire back at Russia's weapons.

He said that acquiring such weapons would alter the situation, allowing the Ukrainians to repel Russian artillery.

Russia is advancing from the north and south to the west of Sievierodonetsk in an attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces in the Donbass region comprising Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk Province by bombarding Ukrainian-held towns in their path with artillery.

The mayor of Sievierodonetsk, Oleksandr Stryuk, reported that approximately 10,000 residents were still entrapped within the city, or roughly a tenth of its pre-war population.

In his nightly video message to the nation, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that the fate of the Donbass area was being decided in Sievierodonetsk, a "very brutal and very difficult."

Thursday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense announced that its forces had recaptured some area in the Kherson counteroffensive.

It stated that the Russian forces "suffered casualties in personnel and equipment, mined the terrain as they were repelled, and constructed barricades.

Last week, Ukraine reported a counteroffensive in Kherson, claiming to have captured territory on the south bank of the Inhulets river, which forms the province's southern frontier. It was impossible to independently confirm the scenario.