More than 28,000 people have volunteered to serve in Ukraine’s Offensive Guard units, which are now nearly fully staffed, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

“The units are mostly already formed and today we are recruiting additional volunteers to have a reserve in the future,” Klymenko said on March 11.

The Offensive Guard units, which are expected to be used in an offensive against invading Russian forces, are currently being trained at facilities around the country, Klymenko added.

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Meanwhile, Russian forces are continuing to press their offensive in the area around Ukraine’s Donetsk region city of Bakhmut, the Ukrainian military reported on March 11.

Russian forces launched “more than 100 attacks” across the front line, including around Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiyivka, and Shakhtarsk, the Ukrainian General Staff said during its daily briefing.

Russia also reportedly carried out 29 air strikes and four missile strikes in the Donetsk region over the last 24 hours, the Ukrainian military said, adding that civilians were injured and civilian infrastructure was damaged.

Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Ukrainian military administration in the southern Kherson region, said three civilians were killed and two injured in the city of Kherson when a Russian shell struck their car.

The reports could not be independently confirmed.

Ukraine’s ground forces commander, General Oleksandr Syrskiy, said Ukrainian troops are trying “to buy time for the spring offensive, which is just around the corner.” He said Russia continues to devote resources to the attack on Bakhmut, preventing it from advancing elsewhere.

According to a NATO estimate on March 6, Russia is losing about five times as many troops in the Bakhmut fighting as Ukraine.

Bakhmut has been the scene of intense fighting for weeks. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said on March 10 that the fighting had “escalated” and that Russian forces were carrying out a new push to capture the city.

Meanwhile, on March 10, the Ukrainian government informed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which was formally under the Moscow Patriarchate until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and which has been accused of pro-Russian activities since then, that it was terminating a contract that allowed the UOC to use the prestigious Pechersk Lavra (Monastery of the Caves) in Kyiv. The contract, signed in 2013, will be terminated as of March 29.

A spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow condemned the move, adding that “the persecution of Orthodox believers in Ukraine is reaching full swing.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy held talks with Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin during an unannounced visit to Kyiv on March 10.

Marin accompanied Zelenskiy and senior military officers at the funeral of one of Ukraine’s best-known fighters and commanders, who was killed in clashes near Bakhmut.

The service for 27-year-old Dmytro Kotsyubaylo, killed a few days earlier, was held at the cathedral of Kyiv’s St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery where many mourners clutched flowers and paid their respects. Zelenskiy and Marin also laid flowers at a nearby memorial to fallen Ukrainian soldiers.

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin knows he will have to answer for his crime of aggression,” the Finnish leader told journalists. “The future tribunal must bring justice efficiently and answer Ukrainians’ rightful demands.”

Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, despite abundant evidence to the contrary.