Almost two months after the start of the Russian army’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow announced on Friday that it was aiming for full control of southern Ukraine and the Donbass region. “One of the objectives of the Russian army is to establish total control over Donbass and southern Ukraine”said a senior Russian military official, according to whom it is a “second phase of the special operation” one of the objectives of which is to“ensure a land corridor to Crimea”.
In the Donbass, “Heavy shelling and fighting continues as Russia attempts to advance to places like Lyman, Buhaivka, Barvinkove and Popasna as part of its plan for the region”the British Ministry of Defense said on Friday.
Moscow had revised its plans downwards and withdrawn, at the end of March, its troops from the region of kyiv and the North. Ukraine, which has obtained more substantial arms aid from the West in recent days, continues to assure that it can push Russian soldiers out of its soil.
“They can only delay the inevitable – the time when the invaders will have to leave our territory, especially Mariupol”Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday evening. “The success of the Russian offensive in the South depends on the fate of Mariupol”regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told AFP on Friday.
The strategic port of Mariupol, which Moscow claims to have ” released “is still resisting Russian forces, says kyiv, according to which Ukrainian fighters continue to fiercely defend the huge Azovstal metallurgical complex, where civilians are also entrenched.
Vladimir Putin said Friday that kyiv refused the surrender of the last Ukrainian soldiers entrenched in the industrial zone of Azovstal. His army said Friday it was ready to observe “at any time” a truce “in whole or in part” of the site. The starting point of this break in “will be the raising by Ukrainian armed formations of white flags”.