Russia steps up assaults on Pokrovsk front in Ukraine's east

KYIV (Reuters) - Russian forces stepped up their attacks on the Pokrovsk front in eastern Ukraine over the last 24 hours, the Ukrainian military said on Tuesday, reporting the largest number of battles in the area in a single day in a week.

The increase in fighting comes after Ukraine mounted a surprise cross-border incursion into Russia's Kursk regionin what some military analysts see as an attempt to divert Russian forces from their main offensives in the east.

Russian forces have been trying to advance towards the Kyiv-held logistics hub of Pokrovsk for months, inching forward incrementally and taking advantage of greater troop numbers.

In a daily readout, the Ukrainian military's General Staff said there had been 52 battles on the Pokrovsk front, a visible increase from figures of between 28 and 42 per day that have been reported over the past week.

Ukraine last reported more than that in the first days of August, before Kyiv's forces launched their cross-border attack into Kursk region.

The Russian attacks in the last 24 hours were focused around the villages of Hrodivka and Zhelanne, located about 20 km from Pokrovsk, the General Staff said.

The battles on the Pokrovsk front accounted for more than a third of all the battles reported along a 1,000-kilometer front, according to the Ukrainian readout.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and now controls 18% of Ukrainian territory. Until the surprise attack on Russia, Ukraine had been losing territory to Russian forces.

(Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko; editing by Tom Balmforth and Angus MacSwan)