MOSCOW, Dec. 20 (TASS) - Russia’s armed forces are about to push Ukrainian troops into the countryside part of Maryinka where the Kiev regime’s militants will find it very hard to defend, acting leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Denis Pushilin told Zvezda television channel.

"Maryinka will be liberated very soon <...>. We have a few blocks of flats to go, and as soon as we mop those up, we will be able to drive the enemy to the countryside part [of the city], which is almost completely destroyed, and the enemy will have nothing to cling at there," he said. "Therefore, several areas will open up for our advance - both Kurakhovka and Krasnogorovka," he specified.

This he said would enable Russian forces "to accomplish tasks as part of the liberation of those territories, and to take [the enemy] into ticks near Avdeyevka." According to Pushilin, this would be vital, for the Ukrainians have been shelling Donetsk and Yasinovataya from near Avdeyevka.

He also said the Ukrainians had been building up powerful defenses near Maryinka for the past eight years and had set up numerous firing positions, and dug trenches both along the houses there and under them. Besides, basements were converted to bases and shelters, Pushilin added.

DPR people’s militia forces began their operation to liberate Maryinka, a community west of Donetsk from where the Ukrainian military shelled the republic’s capital, on March 19. The DPR earlier said that the liberation of Maryinka would place the settlement of Aleksandrovka, the Petrovsky district and the Tekstilshchik neighborhood of Donetsk outside the reach of the Ukrainian army’s shelling.