Kyiv: Russia launched major offensive into eastern Ukraine, authorities in Kyiv said, opening a new phase of its invasion after being thwarted in efforts to capture the capital.
Taking to his Telegram channel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “We can now confirm that Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas, which they have been preparing for a long time”.A very large part of the entire Russian army is now focused on this offensive,” In a video address, he said: “No matter how many Russian troops they send there, we will fight. We will defend ourselves.”
In the South, Moscow continued its push to capture the besieged port city of Mariupol, where the last remaining Ukrainian forces have taken a final stand.
Meanwhile on Monday, four people in the eastern Donetsk region were killed by Russian forces while a man and a woman were killed in Kharkiv, in the northeast, when shells hit a playground near a residential building. The Ukraine military’s general staff said Russian forces Monday were increasing assaults in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions — both of which are part of the Donbas — as well as in the area of Zaporizhzhia. It also said Russia was sending reinforcements to the Crimean Peninsula seized from Ukraine in 2014 and to the Rostov-on-Don area, which borders Ukraine.
Overnight, military facilities in the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions and in the port of Mykolayiv, which are in south and east Ukraine, were targeted by Moscow, the Russian defence ministry said