Ukraine said Saturday that it reconquered three towns near Kharkiv, located in the east and second city of the country, while the Russian army focuses on the Donbas and in the south.
“Our Ukrainian army successfully launched a counteroffensive yesterday morning. After long and fierce fighting, our troops evicted Russian troops from Bezruki, Slatine and Prudyanka,” the governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleg Synegubov, told Telegram.
Prudyanka is located about 15 kilometers from the Russian border.
Synegubov also said that two people were killed and 19 injured in Russian shelling in the Kharkiv region in the past 24 hours.
According to the spokesman for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, Kharkiv remains “partially blocked” by Russian forces, which “remain mainly present in the northwest and are strengthening their positions” south of the city.
In the Donbas, which Moscow announced it wants to take full control of, Russian troops are “concentrating their efforts on the area between Slaviansk and Kramatorsk,” an agglomeration located in Donetsk province, announced Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency.
The Russians “are conducting offensive and reconnaissance operations to try to find weak points in our defense,” he said.
Further south, which is also a priority target for Russian forces, they are “trying to continue their offensive on the city of Guliaipole” in the province of Zaporiyia, halfway between the city of the same name and the port of Mariupol.
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Russian invasion is intended “as a beginning” and that Moscow intends to “capture other countries” in the face of recent claims by the Russian Armed Forces about the Moldavian region of Transnistria.
“With reference to the Russian Army, news spread that its task is now supposedly to establish control over southern Ukraine and reach the border with Moldova. And allegedly there, in Moldova, the rights of Russian speakers are violated,” explained the Ukrainian president in reference to the words of Rustam Minnekaev, commander of the Central District of the Army.
Zelensky replied that it is Russian territory that “should take care of the rights of Russian speakers”, since in Russia there is “no freedom of speech” or “freedom of choice”. “There is simply no right to dissent,” he said, adding that in the country “poverty prospers” and “human life is worthless.”
“All nations who, like us, believe in the victory of life over death, must fight with us. They have to help us, because we are the first on this path. And who is next?” , the Ukrainian president asked himself.
“The Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to deter attacks by Russian invaders in the east and south of our country. In the direction of Izium, in the Donbas, in Priazovia, in Mariupol (or) the Kherson region are the places where the fate of this war and the future of our State are decided,” he said.
Zelensky also explained that in places like Sloviansk and Kramatorsk or in Popasna and Kharkiv, located in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, “the occupiers are trying to achieve a primitive goal”, which is to “kill as much as possible and destroy everything they can”.
On the other hand, he thanked the United Kingdom for its decision to return to the British embassy in Kiev. “The United Kingdom became the twenty-first country to return a diplomatic mission to our capital,” he celebrated.
KEEP READING: