Officials have acknowledged Russian advances but Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar told a media briefing that fighting was still fierce, the Reuters news agency reported.
The Russians were "moving over their own corpses," Malyar said, as quoted by Reuters.
Malyar told reporters that Russia had increased the number of military units in Ukraine to 280 from 250 in the past week in a stepped-up effort to regain the initiative, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for the Eastern Group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, was quoted as saying on Thursday that heavy fighting was continuing in Soledar and that the enemy was "suffering heavy losses."
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported on Thursday that Ukrainian troops killed more than 100 Russian soldiers in an attack near Soledar.
"This happened thanks to the coordinated work of the soldiers of the Special Operations Forces, artillery and rocket forces," the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a statement, as quoted by state news agency Ukrinform.
The statement added: "The operators of the Special Operations Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces discovered an enemy concentration in several locations. Artillery was directed to defeat the enemy, and a Tochka-U tactical missile system was also used in one location."
Thursday is day 323 of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
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Source: IAR, PAP, Reuters, ukrinform.net