TOP HEADLINES

· Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has dismissed security figure Ruslan Dziuba, commander of the National Guard, and said separately that his drive to clean up the government would continue.

· Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia's Wagner Group, said the mercenary force had taken the village of Krasna Hora on the northern edge of the Ukrainian city Bakhmut.

· Ukraine's forces are holding their defense along the frontline in Donetsk, including Bakhmut, with the fiercest battles raging for the cities of Vuhledar and Maryinka, Kyiv's top military commander Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said.

· Ukraine's military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said despite Russia's pressure in Maryinka, forces managed to hold the ground.

· The regions of Kyiv, Odessa and Dnipro will be able to avoid electricity cuts on Sunday, leading producer DTEK said, as authorities worked to repair power grids damaged by a major Russian strike.

· Reports indicate that three Russian S-300 missiles hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Saturday night, regional governor Oleh Sinehubov said.

· Russian Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin said calls from ministers of more than 30 countries to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from the 2024 Olympics were unacceptable, TASS news agency reported.

· U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov discussed "priorities," including air defense and artillery, for upcoming meetings of Kyiv's allies in Brussels, both sides said.

· NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will end his term as planned in October, a spokesperson for the alliance said. Earlier, media outlet Welt am Sonntag had reported Stoltenberg's term was to be extended again as the alliance sought to maintain stability during the war in Ukraine.

· NATO should hold an emergency meeting to discuss recent findings about September explosions at the Nord Stream gas pipelines, Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. "There are more than enough facts here," she said.

IN DETAIL

Ukraine is 'holding onto Bakhmut' despite fierce fighting

Ukraine's forces are holding their defense along the frontline in Donetsk, including the besieged town of Bakhmut, with the fiercest battles raging for the cities of Vuhledar and Maryinka, Kyiv's top military commander said.

Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces, said Russia carried out some 50 attacks daily in Donetsk, a region in Ukraine's southeast that Moscow has been trying to occupy fully.

"Fierce fighting continues in the area of Vuhledar and Maryinka," Zaluzhnyi said, in a Telegram message after a call with U.S. General Mark Milley.

"We reliably hold the defense. In some areas of the front we have managed to regain previously lost positions and gained a foothold."

Zaluzhnyi did not specify where the gains were. He added that Ukraine continues to hold Bakhmut, trying to "stabilize" the frontline around the town.

Meanwhile, the head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group said on Saturday his forces are facing fierce resistance around Bakhmut from Ukrainian defenders.

On Friday, Britain said Russian forces were making gains north of Bakhmut, but were having a more difficult time attacking Vuhledar, 93 miles further south.

It is impossible to independently establish the control areas of each side, as fighting along the frontline has slowed in recent months to what Ukraine defense ministry calls "crawling" attempts to move.

Ukraine's military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said that despite Russia's pressure in Maryinka, a nearly deserted and destroyed small city that has been on the frontline since the start of the war a year ago, Ukrainian forces managed to hold the ground.

"Fighting is going on in the city center, but there have been no changes over the past 24 hours," Zhdanov said.

Wagner's head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said it could take two years for Moscow to control the whole of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in Ukraine. Moscow last year claimed both as "republics" of Russia, in a move condemned by most countries of the United Nations as illegal.