Ukraine says Russia has begun its offensive to take control of eastern Ukraine while a Russian missile attack hit the western city of Lviv killing at le
Ukraine says Russia has begun its offensive to take control of eastern Ukraine while a Russian missile attack hit the western city of Lviv, killing at least seven people. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address Monday, ‘Now, we can already state that the Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas, for which they have been preparing for a long time.’ He said a ‘significant part of the entire Russian army is now concentrated on this offensive.’ The Donbas region includes Luhansk and Donetsk, two provinces that are already partly held by Russian-backed separatists, along with the port city of Mariupol to the south. Capturing the region would allow Russia to control a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized in 2014. Russia’s withdrawal of its forces from areas around Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and other parts of the north in recent weeks prompted assessments from Western military officials that Russia was reinforcing and redeploying those assets to eastern Ukraine.
