‘Donbas has been destroyed’

Russia now attacking defences around region, says Ukraine

KYIV: Russian forces intensified their offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region using artillery, rocket launchers and aircraft to damage defences around Donetsk, Ukraine’s general staff said.

“The Russian enemy carried out massive artillery shelling of civilian infrastructure, including multiple rocket-launchers,” it said in a statement yesterday.

Russian shelling in Luhansk, also in the Donbas, had killed 13 civilians over the past 24 hours, regional governor Serhiy Gaidai said.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General office said 232 children had been killed and 427 wounded since the beginning of the Russian invasion.

The industrial Donbas region, the focus of recent Russian offensives, had been destroyed, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, as some of the world’s richest countries pledged to bolster Kyiv with billions of dollars.

Since turning away from Ukraine’s capital, Russia is using massed artillery and armour to try to capture more territory in the Donbas, comprised of the Donetsk and Luhansk areas, which Moscow claims on behalf of separatists.

“The occupiers are trying to exert even more pressure. It is hell there – and that is not an exaggeration,” Zelenskyy said on Thursday night.

There were also “constant strikes” on the Odesa region in the south, he said, adding: “The Donbas is completely destroyed.”

Moscow calls its invasion a “special military operation” to rid Ukraine of fascists, an assertion Kyiv and its Western allies say is a baseless pretext for an unprovoked war.

Russia will likely reinforce operations in the Donbas region once it secures the port city of Mariupol, scene of a weeks-long siege, British military intelligence said.

As the invasion nears the threemonth mark, the US Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved nearly Us$40bil (Rm176bil) in new aid for Ukraine, by far the largest US aid package to date.

The Group of Seven rich nations also agreed to provide Ukraine with Us$18.4bil (Rm81bil).

Meanwhile, amid fear of Russian reprisals, hundreds of Ukrainian fighters who surrendered after enduring a merciless assault on Mariupol’s steel factory were registered as prisoners of war, and Zelenskyy vowed to seek international help to save them.

Amnesty International said the POW status meant the soldiers “must not be subjected to any form of torture or ill treatment”.