The Ukrainian army on Tuesday shared video of the war showing a group of Russian soldiers taking refuge in an abandoned house just before a rocket hits the building. The sequence appeared in Donbasswhere, according to Moscow, the Kremlin troops have already launched the latest offensive with which they intend to take this Ukrainian region.
This Tuesday, Vladimir Putin’s government announced the second phase of its war in Ukraine, which will focus on the “full release” of the Donbass in the east of the country, an operation that includes the latest attack on the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, the last stronghold of the Ukrainian resistance in the strategic port city, where Ukrainian troops accuse the Kremlin of using chemical weapons.
“As already announced, the operation in eastern Ukraine is aimed at the complete liberation of the republics Donetsk and Luhansk. This operation will continue, the next phase of this special operation will begin,” said the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in statements collected by the Efe agency.
For Ukraine, the major Russian offensive in Donbass began on Monday, Lugansk regional governor Serhiy Gaidai and the Ukrainian president announced in the morning. Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
In fact, Lavrov was the first senior official to confirm Russia’s major offensive just 21 days after troops withdrew from northern and northeastern Ukraine.
“We will fight”
Russia has taken all this time to regroup its forces and deploy new tactical battalion groups to Ukraine’s east – and south as well – as well as artillery equipment, air support, and command and control systems.
“We will defend ourselves. We will fight. We will not hand over anything from Ukraine.” The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has responded, proposing today to the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) to extend martial law by one month until May 25.