the ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, informed his country on Monday night that Russia “The great battle for Donbas has begun”alluding to the expected major offensive by the Russian army to control the entire east of the country.
“We can confirm that Russian troops have started that battle”he assured, in a message broadcast by video, broadcast by the news channel Ukrinform, to add below that Ukrainian soldiers “will battle” and that they “will not cede” any of the country’s territory.
“The Russian army has concentrated a large part of its total troops there to concentrate on its offensive,” he says, to later maintain that “No matter how many Russian troops are deployed, we will fight.”
The Ukrainian leader’s message follows the bombings recorded throughout this Monday in Donbas and after the Lugansk regional governor, Serhiy Gaidai, proclaimed the start of the offensive in one of its cities, Kreminna, early in the morning.
“The situation has changed radically,” Gaidai then announced, via Telegram, to report after the first street fighting.
In parallel to the alarm in the east of the country, from Lviv, in the west and 80 kilometers from the border with Poland, five missile attacks were also reported in the morning, leaving at least seven dead.
Especially dramatic is the situation in Mariupol, the strategic port city on the Black Sea, which has suffered daily from Russian bombing since the beginning of the invasion on February 24.
The Ukrainian authorities reported this Monday, for the second day in a row, that it is not possible to open humanitarian corridors to proceed with the evacuation of civilians because, according to kyiv, on the part of Russia there are no security guarantees.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk urged Russia through the official Telegram account to open one of these humanitarian corridors to enable these operations.
According to Ukrainian sources, in a Mariupol steelworks there are close to a thousand civilian refugees. The last Ukrainian soldiers trying to resist the Russian attack on that city are also entrenched there.