Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky told Ukrainian servicemen fighting the Russian army that this week will be ‘historic’ and he expects Russia to intensify its assault on the eastern borders of the city.
His warning comes as the European Union granted Ukraine ‘candidate nation’ status last week, in a move that could irk Russia.
Though Vladimir Putin last week while addressing the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that Ukraine’s EU membership does not affect him as he is not against Kyiv joining EU.
Last Sunday, Zelensky visited a military holdout in the southern city of Mykolaiv where he vowed that Russian-annexed lands will be returned to Ukraine.
“We will not give away the south to anyone, we will return everything that’s ours and the sea will be Ukrainian and safe,” Zelensky was quoted as saying by news agency AFP.
Zelensky’s worries were echoed by Sergiy Gaiday, the regional mayor of eastern Ukraine.
Gaiday, who heads the Lugansk region, including the city of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, said that Russians are shelling Ukrainian troops throughout the day in the city of Lysychansk, where the Ukrainian troops are putting up barbed wire and digging trenches anticipating street battles between both forces.
The police were also lining up burnt vehicles as seen by news agency AFP, in order to thwart Russian infantrymen.
Meanwhile, Russia claimed to have killed several high-profile Ukrainian military officials last week. Russia said it bombed a meeting of top-level Ukrainian military with Kalibr missile strikes near the city of Dnipro killing more than 50 generals and officers.
It said that a building housing ‘ten 155mm howitzers and around 20 armoured vehicles supplied by the West to the Kyiv’ were also destroyed in the attack.
The regional administrators in Luhansk fear Russian troops will encircle Lysychansk by cutting off supply roads.
Gaiday pointed out that despite reports of Severodonetsk falling to Russian hands, the city is still holding out. “Look how long Severodonetsk has held out: you can see they (the Russians) don’t control the town fully… they can’t go further in and they can’t put their big guns or tanks there,” the mayor was quoted as saying by news agency AFP.
“There are no safe places in Lugansk region,” Gaiday said while Ukrainian soldiers fired away at Russian positions at Severodonetsk, where smoke rises from the Azot factory.
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