Zelenskyy makes risky trip to front line to boost morale
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met soldiers and handed out military awards near the front line in the eastern part of the country, in a visit highlighting his role as a wartime leader and aimed at boosting morale.
Sunday’s trip was shrouded in secrecy beforehand and announced in statements issued late that day and early Monday. He traveled to the front-line city of Lysychansk, perhaps the closest he has come to active fighting in the east since the war began.
It’s a perilous journey to reach Lysychansk. A highway and several back roads pass through farm fields pocked with artillery craters. Along the way, an oil refinery that has been on fire for weeks smolders, belching smoke. On the sides of the roads sit the burned orange husks of cars that didn’t make it, pushed aside to make way for others trying to get through.
Officials offered few details of how Zelenskyy reached the city, which has been bombarded by artillery and is at risk of being surrounded by Russian forces in one of the hottest areas of the front.
“I am proud of everyone with whom I met, whom I shook hands with,” Zelenskyy said in a video address describing his visit.
He also offered a cryptic statement of support, saying: “We brought something to the military. I will not talk about it in detail.” It was unclear whether the comment referred to deliveries to the front of newly arrived Western weaponry, which soldiers have said are sorely needed to even the fight against better-armed Russian forces.
The visit was only the second official trip that Zelenskyy — who has signaled his country’s war footing in part by wearing military-style green T-shirts or other army clothing — has taken outside of the region around the capital, Kyiv, since the war began in late February.
Meanwhile, Russian forces continued to fight for control of Sievierodonetsk, an eastern Ukrainian city that is key to Moscow’s goal of completing the capture of the industrial Donbas region.
Zelenskyy said Moscow’s forces also intend to take the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, home to more than 700,000 people, a move that could severely weaken Ukraine’s standing and allow the Russian military to advance closer to the center of the country.
Russia has begun turning over the bodies of Ukrainian fighters killed at the Azovstal steelworks, the fortress-like plant in the destroyed city of Mariupol where their last-ditch stand became a symbol of resistance against Moscow’s invasion.
Dozens of the dead taken from the bombed-out mill’s now Russian-occupied ruins have been transferred to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, where DNA testing is underway to identify the remains, according to both a military leader and a spokeswoman for the Azov Regiment, which helped defend the mill.