Russia-Ukraine Crisis: In a rare trip outside Kyiv, Ukraine President Volodomir Zelensky visited the war-damaged city of Mykolaiv for the first time since Russian invasion. “The President inspected the building of the Mykolaiv regional state administration which was destroyed as a result of a missile strike by Russian forces,” an official statement said, without specifying when the visit took place.
Meanwhile, with the war in Ukraine’s east raging on, Kyiv received a major boost when the European Union recommended that it become a candidate to join the bloc, in what would be a dramatic geopolitical shift following Russia’s invasion. EU membership is not guaranteed talks have been stalled for years with Turkey, a candidate since 1999. If admitted, Ukraine would be the EU’s largest country by area and its fifth most populous.
Russian President Vladimir Putin railed at the West, the United States in particular, in a speech in St Petersburg on Friday, but sought to play down the EU issue. “We have nothing against it,” he said. “It is not a military bloc. It’s the right of any country to join economic union.” Rockets hit a southern district of Ukraine’s central city of Kryvyi Rih on Saturday leading to at least two casualties, local authorities said in posts on messaging app Telegram.