KHARKIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday made his first trip to the country’s war-torn east since the launch of Moscow’s irruption, as Russian forces tensed their grip around crucial metropolises in the Donbas region.
Zelensky’s office posted a videotape on Telegram of him wearing a pellet-evidence vest and being shown destroyed structures in Kharkiv and its surroundings, from where Russian forces have retreated in recent weeks.
Since failing to capture the capital Kyiv in the early stages of the war, Russia has shifted its focus to the eastern Donbas region as it attempts to consolidate areas under its control.
Its forces said on Saturday they had captured Lyman in the queried region and we’re upping the pressure on the binary metropolises of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
Zelensky has been grounded in Kyiv since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale attack on Ukraine on Feb 24.
“ In this war, the occupiers are trying to squeeze out at least some result, ” Zelensky said in a Telegram post on Sunday. “ But they should have understood long ago that we will defend our land to the last man, ” he added.
The Ukrainian chairman was set to speak to European Union leaders at an exigency peak Monday to decide on a Russian canvas proscription.
Member countries were considering banning Russian channel canvas as they sought to break the impasse on the sixth round of profitable warrants, EU sources said.
‘ Constant shelling ’
The situation in Lysychansk had come “ significantly worse ”, the indigenous governor of the Lugansk region, Sergiy Gaiday, said on Telegram.
“ A Russian shell fell on a domestic structure, a girl failed and four people were hospitalised, ” he said.
On the other bank of the Donets swash, Russian forces “ carried out assault operations in the area of the megacity of Severodonetsk, ” according to the Ukrainian general staff.
Fighting in the megacity was advancing road by road, Gaiday said.
In the embattled megacity, where estimated civilians remain, a original functionary said “ constant shelling ” made it decreasingly delicate to get in or out.
“ Evacuation is veritably unsafe, it’s isolated cases when we manage to get people out. Now the precedence is for the wounded and people who need serious medical backing, ” said Oleksandr Stryuk, head of the megacity’s service and civil administration.
The water force is also decreasingly unstable, and residers have gone further than two weeks without a mobile phone connection, he added.
On Sunday, the Russian defence ministry said it had destroyed a Ukrainian fortified forces magazine in the southeastern megacity of Kryvyi Rih with “ long- range high- perfection dumdums ”.
Russian forces also targeted a Ukrainiananti-air defence system near Mykolaivka in the Donetsk region, as well as a radar station near Kharkiv and five munitions depots, one close to Severodonetsk.
‘ New face ’
Zelensky bandied reconstruction plans with original officers on his trip to Kharkiv, saying there was a chance for areas devastated by Russian attacks to “ have a new face ”.
According to original officers over apartment blocks have been wholly or incompletely destroyed by Russian shelling in the region.
In the megacity of Kharkiv itself, guests were returning to the well- known Demitasse cafe in the central public demesne after it restarted its doors at the end of April.
Residers come by for a coffee, a bite to eat or to sample the “ Biloshka ” ice cream, a Crystal thing the seller has been serving since the 1960s.
“ We need to keep employment. The megacity is coming back little by little, ” the cafe’s director, Alyona Kostrova, 36, said.
The menu has been trimmed due to force problems and the locale is operating with a reduced staff, down to seven or eight from 30 or 40 before the war.
Far from the megacity centre in the neighbourhood of Saltivska, where Russian shells continue to fall, the atmosphere is different.
