Ukrainian forces have made some headway against Russian forces in southern Ukraine but face new Russian attacks around the eastern town of Avdiivka, the Ukrainian military says.
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In an update on Ukraine's more than four-month-old counteroffensive in the south and east, military spokesman Oleksandr Stupun reported an advance of 400 metres to the southwest of Verbove in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Verbove is a village a few kilometres east of Robotyne, a village recaptured by Ukraine last month as it tries to push south towards the Sea of Azov.
Stupun told Ukrainian television the southern advance was still difficult because of Russian minefields and heavily fortified defences.
The Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, said Ukrainian forces appeared to have broken through on the left bank of the Dnipro River in the southern Kherson region.
Ukraine did not comment on the report.
When Ukrainian troops recaptured parts of the Kherson region last year, Russian forces pulled out of its biggest city, also called Kherson.
But they only retreated as far as the other side of the Dnipro, from where they regularly shell the city.
Making progress against Russian troops has also been hard on the eastern front, where the Ukrainian military said its forces were under fire near the towns of Kupiansk and Avdiivka.
"They do not stop their attempts to encircle the city (Avdiivka), they continue to exert pressure there," Stupun said.
"They regrouped and launched new assaults there."
Hanna Maliar, a former deputy defence minister, said the Russian assault on the eastern frontline was aimed at forcing Ukraine to bring in reinforcements from elsewhere.
Ukraine has said its troops are holding out around Avdiivka, which is seen as a gateway to the nearby Russian-occupied industrial city of Donetsk.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian parliament gave initial approval on Thursday to a law that would ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church after authorities accused it of collaborating with Russia following last year's invasion.
The UOC, which says it no longer aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church, denies the charges leveled at it by Ukraine and said the draft law would be unconstitutional.
Yaroslav Zheleznyak, a member of parliament, said on the Telegram messaging app that deputies had voted to support the bill in its first reading.
It has to be backed in a second reading and approved by the president to go in to force.
The law would ban the activities of religious organisations affiliated with centres of influence "in a state that carries out armed aggression against Ukraine" and such activities could be terminated by a court of law.
Another MP, Iryna Herashchenko, said the vote was historic, and described it a first step towards removing "Moscow priests from the Ukrainian land".
The UOC said the draft law, one of several similar bills registered in parliament, did not comply with the European Convention on Human Rights or Ukraine's constitution.
Describing itself as an "independent and separate church," the UOC accused the Ukrainian government of trying to pass it off as affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church and portraying its Ukrainian clergymen and believers as "agents of the Russian Federation".
Ukrainian authorities and many people in Ukraine had for years seen the UOC as loyal to Russia, and cracked down on the church after Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Tensions have surfaced across the country.
A government commission has ruled that the UOC is still canonically linked to Russia despite the church declaring that it cut ties with the Russian Orthodox Church in May 2022.
Political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko said a ban on the UOC was unlikely to halt its activities and could be challenged in Ukraine and at the European Court of Human Rights.
Fesenko suggested the church could register as a new entity with "no reference whatsoever to canonical ties" with Russia
Australian Associated Press
