Russian forces fight to encircle Ukraine's last eastern stronghold Find Big News

Russian troops fought on Wednesday to surround the last fortress of the Ukrainian military in the east province that had long been contested, because of the surprise echoing from Russian air strikes in a shopping center that killed at least 18 in the country’s center two days earlier.

Moscow’s battle to win the entire Donbas region from Ukraine saw Russian troops pushing two villages in southern Lysychansk while Ukrainian troops struggled to prevent their siege.

The British Ministry of Defense said Russian troops made “gradual progress” in their attack to capture Lysychansk, the last city in Luhanansk Province under Ukraine’s control after the resignation of Ukraine forces from the neighboring city of Sievierodonetsk.

Russian troops and their separatist allys control 95% of Luhanansk and about half of Donetsk, two provinces that form donbas which are mostly in Russian

Study of War, a Think Tank institution based in Washington, said that Ukraine was likely to withdraw battles to find more positions that could be maintained while draining the strength of the workforce and Russian resources.

Avril Haines, director of the US National Intelligence, said Russia “might think of time on his party” because of an increase in costs borne by the West and fatigue when the war grew longer. The scenario most likely to be predicted by American intelligence, said Haines, was the “grinding struggle” in which Russia consolidated its grip of South Ukraine in the fall.

The US correctly estimates that Russia will attack Ukraine in February, but wrong in judging that it will quickly win Kyiv. Speaking at an event in Washington on Wednesday, Haines said Russian President Vladimir Putin “effectively had the same political goals as he had before, meaning he wanted to take most of Ukraine” and pushed him away from NATO.

We understand the decision between Putin’s close military goals in this area and its military capacity, a kind of incompatibility between his ambitions and what can be achieved by the military,” said Haines.

Meanwhile, the crew continued to search through the debris of shopping centers in Kremenchuk where Ukraine authorities said 20 people remained lost.

Ukraine State Emergency Press Officer Svitlana Rybalko told The Associated Press that together with 18 people killed, investigators found fragments of eight more bodies. It is not clear whether it means that there are more victims. A number of people who survived suffering from the interrupted limb.

The police cannot say exactly how many (victims) are there. So we did not find the body but body fragments,” Rybbalko said. “Now we are cleaning an explosion earthquake. Here, we are practically unable to find such a body.”

Some families stand near what is left from the Amstor shopping center Wednesday morning in the hope of finding a missing person.