Zelensky visits Ukraine’s east as Russia makes push for Donbas

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits a place of a fight with Russian troops in Kharkiv region yesterday. (Reuters)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday made his first trip to the country’s war-torn east since the launch of Moscow’s invasion, as Russian forces tightened their grip around key cities in the Donbas region. Zelensky’s office posted a video on Telegram of him wearing a bullet-proof vest and being shown destroyed buildings 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 contested region, as they upped the pressure on the twin cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. The situation in Lysychansk had become “significantly worse”, the regional governor of the Lugansk region, Sergiy Gaiday, said on the messaging service, Telegram. Meanwhile, on the eastern bank of the Donets river, Russian forces “carried out assault operations in the area of the city of Severodonetsk,” according to the Ukrainian general staff. Fighting in the city was advancing street-by-street, Gaiday said. Zelensky has been based in Kyiv since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale attack on Ukraine on February 24. “In this war, the occupiers are trying to squeeze out at least some result,” Zelensky said in a later Telegram post yesterday. “But they should have understood long ago that we will defend our land to the last man. They have no chance. We will fight and we will definitely win.” “The situation is very difficult, especially in those areas in the Donbas and Kharkiv regions, where the Russian army is trying to squeeze at least some result for itself,” Zelensky said late on Saturday in his daily address to the nation. Russia’s defence ministry had said the “town of Krasny Liman (Moscow’s name for Lyman) has been entirely liberated from Ukrainian nationalists.” Lyman lies on the road to Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk, which is “now surrounded,” according to a police official in Lugansk province cited by Russian state media. But governor Gaiday insisted that “Severodonetsk has not been cut off”. In the embattled city, where an estimated 15,000 civilians remain, a local official said “constant shelling” made it increasingly difficult to get in or out.