Russian forces are ramping up pressure in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass, which they have turned into “hell”, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, who also viewed Washington’s announced massive aid to Kyiv as an investment in Western security.
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The US Congress on Thursday unblocked a gargantuan $40 billion envelope to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russia. And G7 finance ministers have started counting the billions each country could contribute to Kyiv.
“For our partners, it’s not just an expense or a donation,” Zelensky reacted in his video speech on Thursday night.
“It is their contribution to their own security, because protecting Ukraine means protecting themselves from new wars and crises that Russia could cause,” he said.
In particular, the new American aid should allow Ukraine to equip itself with armor and strengthen its anti-aircraft defenses, while Russia focuses its efforts on the east and south of the country after failing to take Kyiv and Kharkiv in the north.
In particular, Moscow is seeking full conquest of the Donbass, a Russian-speaking region partially controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.
“Ukrainian armed forces continue to make progress in liberating the Kharkiv region. But the occupiers are trying to further increase the pressure in the Donbass. It’s hell and it’s no exaggeration,” said the Ukrainian president.
Severodonetsk crushed under fire
According to local governor Serguiï Gaïdaï, Russian shelling on Thursday in Severodonetsk in the Lugansk region (east) left 12 dead and 40 wounded. He said most of the shots hit apartment buildings and the death toll could be rising.
An AFP team on the ground found that this industrial city had been turned into a battlefield for several days and crushed under artillery fire.
“I don’t know how long we can keep this up,” said Nella Kachkina, 65, a retired community worker.
Severodonetsk and Lysychansk form the last nest of Ukrainian resistance in the Lugansk region. The Russians surround these two places, separated by a river, and bombard them relentlessly.
Separately, Russian soldiers killed five civilians in the Donetsk region, including in Donbass, on Thursday, according to Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Russia announced on Thursday that nearly 800 Ukrainian soldiers holed up in the bowels of the Azovstal steel complex in the port of Mariupol surrendered over the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 1,730 since Monday.
Moscow released footage showing cohorts of men in riot gear, some with crutches or bandages, emerging after a long battle that had become a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion of Mariupol. According to Kyiv, this city-martyr was 90% destroyed and at least 20,000 people died there.
These soldiers, including 80 wounded, “made themselves prisoners,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Kyiv did not speak of surrender. “I’m doing everything to ensure that the most influential international forces are informed and involved as much as possible in the rescue of our heroes,” said Zelenskyy on Thursday evening.
underground maze
The evacuated fighters, mostly members of a naval rifle unit and the Azov regiment set up by Ukrainian nationalists, had holed up for several weeks in the maze of underground tunnels dug under the giant steelworks in Soviet times, and were heavily bombed by Russians.
In a video released on Thursday, Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov regiment, confirmed he was still at the factory with the rest of the command and refused to reveal details about the ongoing “operation”.
Their fate remains unclear: Ukraine wants to organize an exchange of prisoners of war, but Russia has announced that it considers at least some of them not soldiers but “neo-Nazi” fighters.
The war threatens to worsen the global food crisis as it severely disrupts agricultural activity and grain exports from Ukraine, a country that used to be the world’s fourth-largest corn exporter and is on track to become the third-largest wheat exporter.
“Stop blocking the Black Sea ports! Allow the free movement of ships, trains and trucks transporting food from Ukraine,” the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, launched Thursday night at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia responded by denouncing the Western desire to “blame Russia for all the world’s problems”.