Ukraine’s woes mount with a deadly assault on Kyiv, capture of an eastern city and difficult battle in the north.

During a difficult week in Ukraine’s ground war, Russian troops completed their conquest of Chasiv Yar, a high ground in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, and claimed to have breached the outskirts of Kupiansk, a city with a pre-war population of more than 26,000, in Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv region.

Both conquests are the result of months-long efforts and have cost the Russians dearly in blood and weapons.

At the same time, Russian forces pushed into Dnipropetrovsk, a Ukrainian region whose borders they first breached over the weekend of June 7-8, capturing the village of Sichneve, which Russians call Yanvarskoye. It was the third claimed conquest in Dnipropetrovsk. Earlier, Russia captured Dachnoye and Malynivka.

Russia also began to launch jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicles to deadly effect, killing 31 people in Kyiv on July 31.