Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russian troops have started a long-anticipated offensive in eastern Ukraine.
“We can now confirm that Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas, which they have been preparing for a long time,” Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy added that a “significant portion of the Russian army is now concentrated on this offensive.”
There has been no comment thus far from Russia’s Defense Ministry on the latest fighting.
The general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said Tuesday that Russian forces were attempting to take full control of the eastern Donbas region.
“The occupiers made an attempt to break through our defenses along nearly the entire frontline in the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions,” a statement said.
On Monday evening, Ukrainian National Security Council secretary Oleksiy Danilov said that Russian forces had taken over the Luhansk town of Kreminna and one other town, but elsewhere the Ukrainian military was holding out its defense.
Ukraine has been anticipating a renewed Russian assault on Donbas since Russian forces began to pull back from central regions of Ukraine, including towns around the capital Kyiv, in late March.
“The second wave of the war has started,” Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak said Monday in reference to the Russian offensive.
Russia has also continued trying to capture the southeastern port city of Mariupol, which has been under siege since the beginning of the invasion. Control of Mariupol is crucial for Russia as it attempts to secure the Azov coast and create a corridor between Crimea and Donbas.
Russia confirms launching ‘next phase’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Russia is beginning a new stage of what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine.
“The next phase of this operation is now beginning,” Lavrov said in an interview with India Today.
“I am sure that this will be a very important moment of the entire special operation,” he added.
Russia has bombed cities and reduced civilian areas to rubble since invading Ukraine on February 24. It denies targeting civilians, however, and says it is taking part in a “special operation” to demilitarize its neighbor.
Lavrov said the operation’s aim was to liberate the self-declared separatist republics of Donetskand Luhansk.
He also said Moscow was not considering the possibility of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine and claimed that Russian troops there are only targeting the country’s military infrastructure and not the civilian population.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces had carried out dozens of strikes in eastern Ukraine overnight.
Russian troops take eastern city of Kreminna: regional governor
Russian forces have seized the city of Kreminna in eastern Ukraine, according to the governor of the Luhansk region.
Governor Serhiy Gaidai told a briefing that Russian soldiers had entered the city after “leveling everything to the ground,” adding that Ukrainian forces were regrouping.
Kreminna, a city of around 18,000 people, lies southeast of the capital, Kyiv, and between Luhansk and Kharkiv.
It came under heavy artillery fire overnight and also saw street battles. Gaidai said Russian forces had attacked “from all sides.”
“It is impossible to calculate the number of dead among the civilian population. We have official statistics — about 200 dead — but in reality there are many more, ” he said, without specifying what period the estimated death toll covered.
Ukraine said earlier on Tuesday that Russia had launched a new offensive focusing on the Donbas region in the country’s east.
