Zelensky heads to battle zone in show of strength after clashes with his top general

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY visited troops at the southern front line yesterday in a show of strength amid rumours he had ordered the resignation of his top general.

Mr Zelensky undertook a dangerous mission to the village of Robotyne, which Kyiv retook from Russian forces last summer but is again under heavy attack.

Video posted on Facebook showed the president in uniform meeting soldiers in a dark room that looked like an underground cellar.

“I have the great honour to be here today, to reward you, because you have such a difficult and decisive mission on your shoulders to repel the enemy and win this war,” Mr Zelensky told fighters.

“I wish you victory, I want to reward you and I wish you to do everything to achieve this victory sooner.”

Earlier in the day, he met military and security chiefs in the region.

Reports suggest he ordered the resignation of the army’s Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi in a showdown meeting last Monday. The general, hugely popular with Western military leaders and also with voters in Ukraine, reportedly refused to leave his post.

It came as Moscow-installed officials say Ukrainian shelling killed at least 28 people at a bakery in the Russian-occupied city of Lysychansk.

At least one child was among the dead on Saturday, local leader Leonid Pasechnik wrote in a statement on Telegram.

A further 10 people were rescued from under the rubble by emergency services, he said.

Ukrainian officials in Kyiv did not comment.

Both Moscow and Kyiv have increasingly relied on longer-range attacks this winter amid largely unchanged positions on the 930-mile front line in the nearly two-year war.

However, Ukrainian forces have come under intense Russian attack during the past 24 hours, with continuous assaults along the front line, Ukraine’s general staff said in a statement yesterday.