Russia, Ukraine continues fierce fighting around Krasnoarmeysk in Donetsk

The Russian and Ukrainian forces continued their fierce fighting around the strategic city of Krasnoarmeysk (known as Pokrovsk in Ukraine) in Donetsk on Wednesday.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that its forces thwarted the Ukrainian army’s attempt to break through the encirclement in Krasnoarmeysk,and repelled 12 enemy counterattacks over the past 24 hours.

The Russian troops gained control of 24 buildings in the city and the offensives in the northern direction continued, the ministry said.

The situation for the besieged Ukrainian troops in Krasnoarmeysk is deteriorating, and surrender is the only way out for them, it added.

On the same day, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said that Ukrainian forces repelled 52 Russian attacks on the Pokrovsk front.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky inspected the frontlines, saying Russia had been forced to push back its deadline for taking control of the strategic city.

China's software and information technology services industry saw a rapid expansion in the first two months of this year, reporting double-digit growth in terms of revenues, official data showed Tuesday.

In the January-February period, the total revenue of the software sector rose 11.7 percent year on year to more than 2.15 trillion yuan (about 311.83 billion U.S. dollars), while the total profits climbed 7.3 percent to 269.3 billion yuan, according to data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Software exports increased by 12.7 percent on a yearly basis.

Software products registered steady growth in revenue in the two months, accounting for 21.9 percent of the industry's total revenue. Information technology services maintained double-digit growth and raked in roughly 1.45 trillion yuan in revenue, taking up 67.2 percent of the industry's total revenue.