Ukrainian troops in the country’s east are fighting on in the face of intense Russian bombardment, under conditions in the Donbas region that President Volodymyr Zelensky described as “hell.” In his nightly address, Zelensky repeated accusations that the Kremlin’s forces were committing genocide, citing Russian bombing of civilian targets in the Chernihiv region and the city of Severodonetsk. 

The Pentagon said Thursday it had observed “a lot of kinetic activity,” or active fighting, in between the cities of Kherson and Mykolaiv, but that there were no major changes on the battlefield. On the same day, the Senate approved President Biden’s $40 billion aid package, which contains fresh military, humanitarian and financial assistance to Ukraine. Biden is set to sign the package into law during his trip to East Asia.

A deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, a military unit that helped defend Mariupol and has far-right ties, said Thursday in a Telegram video that he was still inside the Azovstal steel plant. The caption of the video disavowed surrender. The International Committee of the Red Cross is tracking hundreds of prisoners of war from the facility now in Russian custody after a negotiated surrender this week. Moscow and Kyiv have given sharply differing accounts of the number of Ukrainian troops that laid down their arms.