Kyiv, Jan 13 (AP) Russian forces are bypassing a key stronghold in eastern Ukraine that they have fought for months to capture and are focusing instead on cutting supply lines to it, a Ukrainian official said Monday.

Russian troops are going around the vital logistics hub of Pokrovsk, where a steadfast Ukrainian defence has kept them at bay, and are taking aim at a highway that leads from there to the central Ukraine city of Dnipro, Maj Viktor Trehubov, a local Ukrainian army spokesperson, told The Associated Press.

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That route is crucial for supplies feeding Ukrainian forces in the entire region. Cutting the highway traffic would also severely weaken Pokrovsk.

“So far, they have not achieved their goal and (Ukrainian forces) are working to ensure that they do not achieve it in the future — just as they have not been successful in other attempts to bypass the city,” Trehubov said in a WhatsApp message.

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Ukraine's army is under severe strain along parts of the approximately 1,000-km front line, especially in the eastern Donetsk region where Pokrovsk is located.

After almost three years of war, Ukrainian units are depleted and are outnumbered by Russian forces. Though its battlefield progress has been slow and costly, momentum in the war is in Russia's favour and its onslaught has gradually swallowed up towns and villages.

In his daily video address to the nation late Sunday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said fighting around Pokrovsk was “the most intense” in recent days.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is pressing his advantage ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump's arrival in the White House next week. Trump says he wants to bring a swift end to the war, though he hasn't publicised details of his plans.

In 2022, Moscow illegally annexed the Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk regions, which make up the economically important Donbas industrial area, together with the southeastern provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. But Russian forces don't fully control any of them. (AP)

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