Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the war-torn southern frontline on Saturday for the first time since the Russian invasion as “fierce battles” raged again in the eastern Donbas region. Making a rare trip outside Kyiv where he is based for security reasons, Zelenskyy travelled to the hold-out Black Sea city of Mykolaiv and visited troops nearby and in the neighbouring Odesa region.
Russian forces have directed their firepower on the east and south of Ukraine in recent weeks since failing in their bid to take the capital Kyiv after the lightning February 24 invasion. “It is important that you are alive. As long as you live there is a strong Ukrainian wall that protects our country,” Zelenskyy told soldiers in the Odesa region. “I want to thank you from the people of Ukraine, from our state for the great work you are doing, for your impeccable service. ” Mykolaiv is a key target for Russia as it lies on the way to the strategic Black Sea port of Odesa. It is around 100km northwest of Kherson, which fell to Russia in the first weeks of the war.
Zelenskyy’s office said the president also visited the regional capital Mykolaiv and inspected its destroyed administration building, where 37 people were killed in late March when a missile blasted through the building. Russian forces reached the outskirts of Mykolaiv in early March but were driven back. Zelenskyy also visited a hospital in Mykolaiv and awarded honours for bravery to mayor Oleksandr Senkevych and governor Vitaliy Kim for their work during the four months of Russia’s invasion, his office said in separate statements.
Meanwhile, the worst of the bloodshed continues to be in the eastern industrial Donbas region, with battles raging in villages outside the city of Sievierodonetsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for weeks. “Now the most fierce battles are near Sievierodonetsk,” the governor of the eastern Lu- hansk region, Sergiy Gaiday, said. Gaiday said there was “more destruction” at the besieged Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, where he said 568 people were sheltering, including 38 children. He also said Lysychansk — a Ukrainiancontrolled city across a river from battered Sievierodonetsk —is being “heavily shelled”.
A big explosion rocked an area near Sievierodonetsk on Saturday and a large orange- coloured cloud could be seen rising into the air, a Russianbacked representative said. Rodion Miroshnik, an official in the self-styled separatist administration of the Luhansk People’s Republic, posted a video of what he said was the cloud on Telegram app. Three Russian missiles also destroyed a fuel storage depot in the eastern town of Novomoskovsk on Saturday. At least 11 people werereported to be injured.