MOSCOW: Russian troops and their separatist allies were fighting Friday in the centre of Mariupol, a strategic port city in the southeast of Ukraine, the Russian defence ministry said.

“In Mariupol, units of the Donetsk People’s Republic, with the support of the Russian armed forces, are squeezing the encirclement and fighting against nationalists in the city centre,” the ministry said in Moscow.

Russia says over 2,900 Ukrainian military facilities destroyed

Backed by Russian troops, separatists from Lugansk have “liberated more than 90 percent of the republic’s territory,” the ministry added, referring to the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic, whose independence Moscow recognised on February 21.