Even as a missile strike on Friday hit the outskirts of Lviv, a Ukrainian city that had been spared much of the Russian assault, the latest intelligence assessments indicate that Russian forces are still struggling to capture more territory as they try to push across Ukraine.

The British defence intelligence service said on Friday that Russian forces had “made minimal progress this week”, and that Ukrainian forces around the capital, Kyiv, had continued to frustrate Russian attempts to encircle the city.

Still, Russia was continuing to bombard the capital. A large explosion from what appeared to be a cruise missile strike or aerial bombardment blew a crater into the courtyard of a residential building in Kyiv on Friday, in one of the larger strikes to hit a civilian area in the city, and left at least one dead.

Russia’s recent territorial gains have been mostly in the south and east of the country, including in the areas around Mariupol, according to assessments by western governments and independent analysts. Russian forces have advanced from the southern city of Kherson, which they have captured, towards Kryvyi Rih, closer to the centre of Ukraine.

Russia also continued its assaults on Mariupol from the east and west on Thursday, and on Friday its defence ministry said that Russian forces and Russia-backed separatists were “tightening the noose” around the city. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russians were carrying out the “total destruction of civilian infrastructure, housing and livelihoods”.

The cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Sumy in the north and northeast remain encircled and subject to heavy Russian shelling, British defence intelligence said.

Ukrainian military officials insisted this week that they were mounting a fierce counterattack. Forces in Kharkiv, the second largest Ukrainian city, which has seen extensive destruction from Russian strikes since the start of the invasion, reported that they had inflicted heavy losses on a Russian rifle regiment that had besieged the city.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said that Russian forces had launched several unsuccessful attacks south of Izyum, in the Kharkiv region. Russian forces are likely seeking to bypass the city, the analysis said, to continue advancing towards Slovyansk, a city that is controlled by Russia-backed separatists.

(New York Times News Service)