Russia begins ground offensive for Ukraine's east, Zelensky says
CBC
Russian forces attacked along a broad front in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday as part of a full-scale ground offensive to take control of the country's eastern industrial heartland in what Ukrainian officials called a "new phase of the war."
Ukraine's General Staff said Russian forces are focusing their efforts on taking full control of the Donbas region. "The occupiers made an attempt to break through our defences along nearly the entire frontline," the General Staff said in a statement early Tuesday.
The stepped-up assaults began Monday along a front of more than 480 kilometres, focused on the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, with the Russian forces trying to advance in several sections, including from the neighbouring Kharkiv region.
In southern Donetsk, the General Staff said the Russian military has continued to blockade and shell the strategic port city of Mariupol and fire missiles at other cities.
On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address that a "significant part of the entire Russian army is now concentrated on this offensive."
Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas and have declared two independent republics that have been recognized by Russia. Russia has declared the capture of the Donbas to be its main goal in the war since its attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, failed.
"No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight," Zelensky vowed. "We will defend ourselves."
Troops battled in the streets of Kreminna on Monday before Russia was able to gain control of the city, according to Serhiy Haidai, Luhansk regional military administrator.
Haidai said that before advancing, Russian forces "just started levelling everything to the ground." He said his forces retreated to regroup and keep fighting.
The breakthrough at Kreminna brings the Russians closer to the city of Slovyansk, which is seen as a key target in the Russian offensive. Slovyansk was seized by pro-Russian fighters in 2014, only to be retaken by Ukrainian forces months later following intense fighting.
Russian troops have already seized the city of Izyum, which sits along a highway north of Slovyansk, and they are poised to push toward the city from the north and the east. Slovyansk lies just north of another key city, Kramatorsk, where an earlier Russian attack on a train station killed more than 50 people.
On Monday morning, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's national security council, told Ukrainian media that the defensive line had not been broken elsewhere.
"Fortunately, our military is holding out," Danilov said.
In Mariupol, Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard, said in a video message that Russia had begun dropping bunker-buster bombs on the Azovstal steel plant where the regiment was holding out.
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