Russian troops destroyed the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said, while the Ukrainian military reported rocket fire in several areas of the country, The Guardian reports.

The latest fighting in the war that Russia launched in Ukraine on February 24 has centered on four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin says he illegally annexed in late September, the Associated Press reports. This testifies to Moscow’s struggle to establish control over Ukrainian regions and Ukraine’s determination to return them.

In his latest address to Ukrainians, Zelensky noted that the situation “remains very difficult” in several front-line cities of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine. Together, the provinces make up Donbas, a sprawling industrial region bordering Russia that Putin has identified as a hot spot since the start of the war, and where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting since 2014.

“Bakhmut, Soledar, Maryinka, Kreminna. For a long time, not a single residential area remained on their land that was not damaged by shells and fires. The occupiers actually destroyed Bakhmut, another Donbas city that the Russian army turned into ruins,” Zelenskyy said in his video speech.

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