The battle for the Donbas region has begun, Ukraine’s leaders declared Monday.
“We can now confirm that Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas, which they have been preparing for a long time,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on messaging app Telegram. “A large part of the Russian army is now dedicated to this offensive.”
The announcement comes nearly two months after the start of Russia’s invasion, in which Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces struggled to gain much ground since the earliest days in the face of stiff resistance from Ukrainian defensive efforts and reset to focus on the territory in the eastern part of Ukraine.
Zelensky has vowed not to cede any region in Ukraine to the Russians, stressing he doubts the Russian military would stop with the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have declared independence from Kyiv.
“Ukraine and the people of our states are absolutely clear: We don’t want anyone else’s territory, and we are not going to give up our own,” Zelensky said in an interview with CNN that aired on Sunday. “I don’t trust the Russian military and Russian leadership. That is why we understand that the fact that we fought them off and they left, and they were running away from Kyiv, from the north, from Chernihiv, and from that direction — it doesn’t mean if they are able to capture Donbas, they won’t come further toward Kyiv.”
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Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, also said the new phase of the war had begun, with attempts by Russian forces to break through Ukraine’s defense in the Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv territories. A city in Luhansk, which is part of the Donbas region, was taken over Monday. Eight civilians were killed in the new invasion during Russian strikes, local officials said.
“No matter how many Russian soldiers are brought here, we will fight. We will defend ourselves,” Zelensky said Monday evening, according to the BBC.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby affirmed the reports of a Russian offensive in the Donbas region.
“We still consider what we’re seeing to be a piece of shaping operations, that the Russians are continuing to set the conditions for what they believe will be eventual success on the ground,” Kirby told reporters, according to the New York Post. “We believe that the Russians are shaping and setting the conditions for future offensive operations. We also see that there is active combat going on the the Donbas — as there has been for the last several weeks.”
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Meanwhile, the port city of Mariupol is said to be on the brink. With no way to resupply the small number of defenders, the fall of Mariupol appears imminent, but the fighters who remain are not giving up.
“City still has not fallen. There is still our military forces, our soldiers. So they will fight to the end,” said Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal on ABC.
