"We can't push out Ukrainian forces from the city. We can't push them out."

Russia is struggling to make significant military gains in Ukraine’s Donbas region because it is fighting Kyiv’s forces one-on-one, a pro-Moscow reporter has said.

War correspondent and Putin propagandist Aleksandr Sladkov made a rare admission of Russia’s military struggles in Ukraine, speaking in a video posted to social media late on Monday.

He said that Vladimir Putin’s so-called special military operation was ‘shamefully indecisive’, that Russian troops ‘can’t push out Ukrainian forces’, and that Moscow’s armies are ‘making a feat out of something that should be routine’…

It was unclear whether Sladkov was saying Ukrainian or Russian forces had made a salient into the other’s territory, but by saying ‘we can’t close the the sailient’, it suggested Russian forces had been unable to encircle Kyiv’s troops.