Troops holding the wall
Zelensky visits frontline soldiers in the south in a rare trip outside Kyiv
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky 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, Mr Zelensky travelled to the hold-out Black Sea city of Mykolaiv and visited troops nearby and in the neighbouring Odessa region.
Russian forces have direct“It
ed their firepower on the east and south of Ukraine in recent weeks since failing in their bid to take the capital Kyiv.
is important that you are alive. As long as you live there is a strong Ukrainian wall that protects our country,” Mr Zelensky told soldiers.
“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 is on the way to the strategic Black Sea port of Odessa. It is about 100km northwest of Kherson, which fell to Russia in the first weeks of the war.
Mr Zelensky surveyed the badly damaged regional administration building in Mykolaiv and met officials in what appeared to be a basement, where he handed out awards to soldiers, in a video released by his office.
Meanwhile, pro-Russian officials in the eastern, separatist-held city of Donetsk said that five civilians were killed and 12 injured by Ukrainian bombardment. “As a result of the bombardment by Ukrainian forces, five people were killed and 12 others were wounded in the Donetsk People’s Republic,” the local authorities said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Russian state television aired social media videos of two US military veterans, who went missing last week while fighting alongside the Ukrainian army, stating they had been captured by Russian forces.
US President Joe Biden had said on Friday he did not know the whereabouts of Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh, after their relatives lost contact with the pair. A third American is also missing.
In Lysychansk, the governor Serhiy Gaiday admitted that watching his home city Severodonetsk be shelled and people he knew dying was “painful”. “I’m a human being, but I bury this deep inside me,” he said.