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By Anastasiia Malenko
KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine's top commander said on Thursday he had visited brigades defending the Novopavlivka front in the eastern Donetsk region where Russia has stepped up its assaults.
"The enemy is conducting intense offensive actions in this area, trying to break through the defences of our troops and capture three settlements," Oleksandr Syrskyi, chief of Ukraine's armed forces, wrote on Facebook.
Syrskyi did not say when or which part of the front he had visited.
Ukraine's military reported 19 combat engagements on the Novopavlivka front in the past day near the villages of Kostyantynopil, Rozdolne, Shevchenko and Burlatske.
The area near the villages where clashes took place has lithium and rare earth deposits, according to the Ukrainian Geological Survey.
Control of Ukraine's large deposits of critical minerals has come into sharp focus this month after U.S. President Donald Trump expressed interest in gaining access to them.
Trump said Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would visit Washington on Friday to sign an agreement on joint development of rare earth minerals. Zelenskiy said the success of the deal would hinge on those talks and continued U.S. aid.
Parts of the Novopavlivka front are around 14 km (nine miles) from the Dnipropetrovsk region which Russia has been trying to reach to take full control of the Donetsk region as part of its stated war aims.
"The plan of the Russian occupiers in these areas has remained unchanged for more than three years, namely, to reach the administrative borders of Donetsk region," Syrskyi said.
Through relentless assaults that Kyiv says have involved heavy casualties, Russian forces have reached around 4.5 km (2.8 miles) from the Dnipropetrovsk region at the closest point of a frontline that sprawls across hundreds of kilometers.
The Russian push comes as Trump says he wants to quickly end the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is willing to negotiate, though he has previously refused to make any major territorial concessions.
Zelenskiy says he wants a just and lasting peace that would include security guarantees from Western allies to help deter another Russian invasion in the future.
(Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Tom Balmforth and Gareth Jones)
