Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday said the situation in the south and the Donbas region remained extremely difficult and reiterated that Russia was building up forces near the besieged city of Mariupol.
"There will be battles ahead. We still need to go down a very difficult path to get everything we want," he said in a late night video address.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Ron Popeski; Editing by Chris Reese)