Kiyv: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that Russian forces had reduced the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine to ruins, while the Ukrainian military on Saturday reported missile, rocket, and air strikes across the nation, which Moscow is attempting to annex after months of resistance.

The four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin triumphantly — and illegally — claimed to have annexed in late September have been the focus of the most recent battles of Russia's 9 1/2 month long war in Ukraine. The fighting shows Russia's efforts to take over those areas and Ukraine's tenacity in reclaiming them.

In a number of frontline cities in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces of eastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy stated that the situation "remains very difficult." Together, the provinces make up the Donbas, a vast industrial area bordering Russia that Putin identified as a focal point from the beginning of the conflict and where, starting in 2014, separatists backed by Moscow have fought.

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Soledar, Maryinka, Bakhmut, and Kreminna. In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy mentioned cities that had once again come under attack. "For a long time, there is no living place left on the land of these areas that has not been damaged by shells and fire," he said. Bakhmut, another Donbass city that the Russian army burned to the ground, was actually destroyed by the occupiers.

Some buildings remain standing in Bakhmut, and the remaining residents still mill about the streets. But like Mariupol and other contested cities, it endured a long siege and spent weeks without water and power even before Moscow launched massive strikes to take out public utilities across Ukraine.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, estimated seven weeks ago that 90% of the city's over 70,000 pre-war residents had left in the months since Moscow concentrated on capturing the entire Donbas.

Between Friday and Saturday, the Ukrainian military general staff reported missile attacks, about 20 airstrikes, and more than 60 rocket attacks across the country. Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesperson, stated that the Bakhmut district, where more than 20 populated areas were attacked, was the scene of the most intense fighting. In Donetsk and the nearby city of Luhansk, he claimed that Ukrainian forces had repelled Russian attacks.

During the summer, Russia's arduous eastern offensive was successful in taking almost all of Luhansk. Donetsk managed to avoid the same fate, and according to analysts and Ukrainian officials, the Russian military has been putting a lot of manpower and resources around Bakhmut lately in an effort to encircle the city.

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The battle around Bakhmut heated up after Ukrainian forces took back the southern city of Kherson nearly a month ago, demonstrating Putin's desire for visible victories after weeks of obvious setbacks in Ukraine.

By seizing Bakhmut, Russian forces would have access to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, two important Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk, and would cut off Ukraine's supply lines. More than half of the year has been spent by Russia bombarding Bakhmut with rockets. After its troops forced the Ukrainians to leave Luhansk in July, a ground assault intensified.

However, some analysts have questioned Russia's tactical reasoning in its relentless pursuit to seize Bakhmut and the nearby areas, which have also been the target of heavy shelling in recent weeks and where Ukrainian officials have reported that some residents are reportedly living in damp basements.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said on Thursday that "the costs associated with six months of brutal, grinding, and attrition-based combat around #Bakhmut far outweigh any operational advantage that the #Russians can obtain from taking Bakhmut."

The Donetsk city of Lyman, which is 65 kilometres (40 miles) north of Bakhmut, was the target of a Russian military operation in the Donbas, according to the Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday. The ministry claims that they "managed to take more advantageous positions for further advancement.”

The city was initially occupied by Russian forces in May, but they left in early October. In addition to the bodies of civilians killed by shelling or who had died from a lack of food and medicine, Ukrainian authorities claimed to have discovered mines on the bodies of dead Russian soldiers that were intended to detonate when someone tried to remove the corpses.

In recent remarks, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel claimed that a 2015 peace agreement for eastern Ukraine negotiated by France and Germany had given Ukraine time to prepare for war with Russia this year. In response, Putin lashed out at Merkel on Friday.

After pro-Russia separatists seized territory in the Donbass a year earlier, war broke out with the Ukrainian military, which led to a full-scale invasion on 24 February, followed by a war with Russia itself. The purpose of that deal was to defuse the situation.

Ukraine's military also reported attacks on other provinces on Saturday, including Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast, Dnipropetrovsk in the center, Zaporizhia in the southeast and Kherson in the south. Along with Donetsk and Luhansk, the latter two are among the four regions that Putin currently claims are Russian territory.

Russian troops left the west bank of the Dnieper River in Kherson province a month ago, allowing Ukrainian forces to declare the region's capital city liberated. 

However, most of the province was still controlled by the Russians, who engaged in assaults from their positions across the river.

The deputy head of Zelensky's office, Kirylo Timoshenko, wrote in a telegram that during the previous day's multiple mortar, rocket and artillery attacks, two civilians were killed and eight others were wounded. 

According to him, residential areas, a hospital, shops, warehouses and important infrastructure were damaged in the Kherson region.

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According to regional governor Maxim Marchenko, the drone strikes left much of Odessa province, including its namesake Black Sea port city, without electricity overnight. 

On Saturday, all customers except hospitals, maternity homes, boiler plants and pumping stations were without power after multiple power facilities were destroyed at once, according to power company DTEK.

The Odessa regional administration's energy department late Saturday warned families without electricity in their homes that it could take up to three months to fully restore power and urged them to leave the area if possible.