Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy predicted Russia will escalate its attacks this week as European Union leaders consider whether to back his country's bid to join the bloc, while Ukraine lost control of a village adjacent to the eastern industrial city of Severodonetsk, the center of weeks of fierce fighting.
"Obviously, this week we should expect from Russia an intensification of its hostile activities," Zelenskyy said in a Sunday nightly video address. "We are preparing. We are ready."
Ukraine applied to join the EU four days after Russian troops poured across its border in February. The EU's executive arm, the European Commission, on Friday recommended that Ukraine receive candidate status.
Leaders of the 27-nation union will consider the question at a summit on Thursday and Friday and are expected to endorse Ukraine's application despite misgivings from some member states. The process could take many years to complete.
The EU's embrace of Ukraine would interfere with one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's stated goals when he ordered his troops into Ukraine: to keep Moscow's southern neighbor out of the West's sphere of influence.
Putin on Friday said Russia had "nothing against" Ukraine's EU membership, but a Kremlin spokesperson said Russia was closely following Kyiv's bid especially in light of increased defense cooperation among EU members.
Lost village
On the battlefield, Russian forces are trying to take complete control of the eastern Donbass region, parts of which were already held by Russian-backed separatists before the Feb. 24 invasion.
Ukraine said Monday it had lost control of a village adjacent to the eastern industrial city of Severodonetsk. "Unfortunately, we do not control Metyolkine anymore. And the enemy continues to build up its reserves," the Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Gaidai said in a statement on social media.
Gaidai said that the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, where hundreds of civilians are said to be sheltering, was being shelled by Russian forces "constantly."
Meanwhile, Russian-backed separatist forces in Ukraine said on Monday they had taken a village beside the main southern road towards the eastern Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk, over which Russian and Ukrainian forces have been fighting for weeks.
Both Russian and Ukrainian forces have suffered significant losses in the battle for Severodonetsk, which is in one of the two self-proclaimed breakaway regions Russia says it launched its invasion of Ukraine in late February to defend.
Vitaly Kiselev, an assistant to the self-styled interior minister of the Russian-backed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), was quoted by Tass news agency as saying the village of Toshkivka, about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) south of Severodonetsk, had been taken.
The head of the city administration, Oleksandr Stryuk, told Ukrainian television on Monday that Moscow's army controls most of the city's residential areas. "If we talk about the whole city, still more than a third is controlled by our armed forces. Russians control the rest," he said.
"There are street battles around the clock," he added, saying Ukrainian troops were being shelled routinely.
Gaidai earlier said pro-Russian forces were trying to break through the lines of Toshkivka. In Severodonetsk's twin city of Lysychansk, residential and administrative buildings had been destroyed by Russian shelling, Gaidai said.
"People are dying on the streets and in bomb shelters," he added.
