Moscow has opened a new phase of its invasion after failing to take the capital kyiv. Russia has indeed launched a major offensive in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday evening, April 18. In recent weeks, the Russian military campaign had refocused on the eastern region of Donbass, partially controlled by pro-Russian separatist forces since 2014.
- The battle in the Donbass has begun
“We can now say that Russian troops have started the battle for Donbass, for which they have been preparing for a long time. A very large part of the entire Russian army is now devoted to this offensive,” said Monday evening Volodymyr Zelensky in a speech broadcast on Telegram. “No matter how many Russian soldiers are brought here, we will fight. We will defend ourselves,” he said, after warning the day before that “they literally want to finish off and destroy Donbass”.
And according to a senior US Defense Department official, Russia has increased its military presence in eastern and southern Ukraine by “eleven battalions” in one week, bringing the total of battalions in the country to 76. For Andriï Yermak, President Zelensky’s chief of staff, it is now clear that “the second phase of the war has begun”. “Trust the armed forces of Ukraine,” he said on Telegram.
“It’s hell. The offensive has begun, the one we’ve been talking about for weeks,” the Ukrainian governor of the Lugansk region, Serguïi Gaïdaï, announced on Facebook. “There is fighting in Rubizhne and Popasna, incessant fighting in other peaceful towns,” he said, acknowledging that Kreminna was “unfortunately under the control of orcs,” the pejorative nickname given to the Russian military.
- Ukraine calls for humanitarian corridors in Berdyansk and Mariupol
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk for her part asked Moscow on Monday to open humanitarian corridors in Berdyansk and Mariupol, in particular at the Azovstal metallurgical complex, where there are fighters but where “many Ukrainian civilians. “Your refusal to open these humanitarian corridors will serve, in the future, as elements for legal proceedings against all those involved in war crimes,” she said on Telegram.
The City Council of Mariupol affirmed this Tuesday April 19 in the morning that Azovstal had been the object of bombardments and assured on Telegram that “at least 1000 civilians, most of them women, children and old people, are in the underground shelters” of the metallurgical complex.
Russia is determined to seize Mariupol, whose last defenders on Sunday ignored a Russian army ultimatum to lay down their arms. “Our soldiers are still there. They will fight until the end,” said Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Chmygal.
The conquest of this port city would constitute an important victory for the Russians because it would allow them to consolidate their coastal territorial gains along the Sea of Azov by linking the Donbass, partly controlled by their supporters, with Crimea which Moscow annexed in 2014.
- Fighting in the south, shelling in the northeast and west of the country
The Ukrainian army also warned Monday evening of a high threat of bombing in the Mykolayiv region (south). “The enemy” tried unsuccessfully to dislodge Ukrainian forces around Oleksandrivka, 40 km west of Kherson (south), according to the same source. Five Russian army vehicles, including armored ones, were destroyed and 28 soldiers were killed in the fighting, it added.
In the northeast, moreover, three civilians were killed Monday in new bombings against Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city. Already on Sunday, at least five people had died there in a series of Russian strikes.
In the west, this time, Russian bombardments killed seven people on Monday and “eleven injured, including a child”, according to local authorities. Not far from the city of Lviv, Russia claims to have destroyed a large depot of “foreign armaments, delivered to Ukraine during the last six days by the United States and European countries, which were stored there”. Located far from the front, near the Polish border, this town has become a city of refuge for displaced people and had hitherto been little targeted by Russian strikes.
- Accused of abuses by kyiv, singled out by Moscow
In this context, Vladimir Putin on Monday awarded an honorary title, in particular for his “heroism”, his “tenacity” and his “great professionalism”, to the 64th motorized rifle brigade. However, Ukraine claimed that the Russian forces and in particular this unit had committed a massacre of civilians in Boutcha, on the outskirts of kyiv. Russia, for its part, assured that the Ukrainian authorities and the Western media had staged the massacre.