“Now we can say that Russian forces have started the Battle of Donbass, which they have been preparing for a long time,” Zelenskyy said. “A very large part of the entire Russian army is being used for this offensive.” Advances towards Barvinkove and Sloviansk in the Donetsk region are expected from Izyum in the Kharkiv region. “The second phase of the war has begun,” Ukrainian chief of staff Andriy Yermak wrote on Telegram.
The governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajdaj, also spoke of the Russian attacks. “It’s hell. The offensive we’ve been talking about for weeks has started,” he said Monday night on Facebook’s online service. There is fighting in Rubishne and Popasna and “constant fighting in other peaceful cities”, added the governor.
“Control over the city of Kreminna has just been lost. Street fights are taking place,” explained Hajdaj. It is no longer possible to evacuate the small town. “The situation is getting worse by the hour.” In Kreminna, about 4,000 of the pre-war 18,000 are still holding out. There was also intense fighting in the cities of Rubishne and Popasna.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych had previously reported on Russian advances towards Hulyaipole in the southeastern Zaporizhia region. About 10,000 Russian soldiers would be in action. The war of Russian aggression against the neighboring country has lasted more than seven weeks.
Late in the evening, the Kremlin confirmed a rocket attack on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. A supply center for the Ukrainian armed forces was hit, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said. A logistics center with much of the foreign weapons that had been delivered from the US and European countries was destroyed.
The city administration had already reported several rocket launches in the morning. Six people died and other residents were injured. These were the first deaths in the city of 720,000, which is just 70 kilometers from the Polish border.
According to Konashenkov, dozens of military installations were destroyed by rocket attacks in Ukraine on Monday. A factory for the repair of Ukrainian “Torch-U” missiles was hit in Dnipro. Ammunition and fuel depots were also destroyed. 120 “nationalists” were killed in the village of Novotoschkivske in eastern Ukraine, near Luhansk. The information could not be verified initially by an independent party.
Meanwhile, the mayor of the besieged Ukrainian port of Mariupol said about 40,000 civilians had been forcibly relocated to Russia or Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine. This was determined using the municipal registry, said Vadym Boitschenko. More than 100,000 civilians are still in Mariupol.
According to information from Kiev, up to 30% of Ukraine’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed by Russian attacks so far. The damage was about $100 billion, according to Infrastructure Minister Oleksander Kubrakov. More than 300 bridges on national roads have been destroyed or damaged and more than 8,000 kilometers of roads need to be repaired or renovated. In addition, dozens of railway bridges were blown up. He hopes that Western countries will support Ukraine’s reconstruction, Kubrakov said.