Fierce fighting is underway on Friday for control of Vougledar, a town in eastern Ukraine which Russian forces are trying to seize, while Vladimir Putin went following Ukrainian “neo-Nazis” on the day of the commemoration of the Holocaust.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed for his part, also on the occasion of the international day of the victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis once morest the Jews, that “indifference and hatred” continued to kill, alluding without the name to the assault that Russia unleashed on February 24, 2022.
He further denounced the “hypocrisy” of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and invited its leader, Thomas Bach, to visit Bakhmout, one of the hottest spots in the war with Russia, in the east of the country. ‘Ukraine.
And this “so that he can see with his own eyes that neutrality does not exist”, he added, in an allusion to the fact that, despite repeated calls from kyiv to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Olympics 2024 planned in Paris, the IOC declared on Wednesday “to study” the possibility of authorizing them to participate under a neutral banner.
150 km from Bakhmout, in Vougledar, a mining town which had 15,000 inhabitants before the Russian invasion, “serious, brutal” clashes took place and Russian troops were “established in the south-east and east of the city,” said an official of the pro-Russian authorities of the eastern region of Donetsk, Ian Gagin.
The spokesman for the Ukrainian army for the eastern zone, Serguiy Tcherevaty, confirmed “fierce fighting”, while ensuring that the Russians had been repelled.
Intensification of Russian attacks
“The enemy is indeed trying to achieve success in this sector but they are not achieving it thanks to the efforts of the Defense Forces of Ukraine,” he said on television. “The enemy exaggerates, to put it mildly, his achievement,” he continued, concluding: “faced with his losses, the enemy retreats.”
“The encirclement and the liberation to come” of this locality will make it possible to “change the balance of forces on the front” by opening the way for an offensive towards Pokrovsk and Kurakhové, localities located further north, judged the leader of separatists from Donetsk, Denis Pushilin.
Ukraine said this week that outnumbered Russian troops had stepped up their attacks in the east, particularly on Vougledar and Bakhmout, the latter of which had been their target for months.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, Russia is seeking to “disperse” Ukrainian forces in order to “create the conditions for a decisive offensive operation”.
Russian soldiers and men from the paramilitary group Wagner recently captured Soledar, north of Bakhmout, a first success in many months and a series of humiliating setbacks for the Kremlin.
“The Russians are advancing, there is constant shooting, night and day, they are trying to find weak points in our defense,” Yuri, a 44-year-old Ukrainian soldier, told AFP in a trench in Bakhmout.
Also in the east, in Chassiv Iar, two people were killed on Friday and at least five injured in Russian artillery fire, local authorities said.
Further north, in the Kharkiv region, the shelling of the village of Dvoritchna left two other dead, announced the Ukrainian presidency.
The southern city of Kherson was also targeted by Russian shells, according to the same source.
Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists and convicts to try to break through Ukrainian lines and conquer the rest of Donbass, a vast industrial zone in eastern Ukraine.
60 more Polish tanks
In this context, President Zelensky welcomed the decision announced by Poland to deliver to his country 60 additional tanks, half of which will be a modernized version of the Soviet T-72, following the 14 German-made Leopard 2s already promised.
At the same time, the Belgian government has undertaken to grant Ukraine new funding, in particular for the supply of missiles, machine guns, ammunition and armored vehicles.
As for the Ukrainian air force, it judged on Friday that the American-made F/16 “might be the best candidate” to “become the only type” of general-purpose aircraft in its fleet, according to its spokesperson. Yuri Ignat.
The Ukrainian president is calling for fighter planes and long-range missiles, as many weapons as Westerners have so far refused to provide.
For its part, the European Union has decided to extend for six months its sanctions imposed on Russia when it annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and is preparing new measures once morest Moscow.
French President Emmanuel Macron, however, stressed on Friday that he would continue to “talk to Russia”.
Putin denounces “neo-Nazis in Ukraine”
“Forgetting the lessons of history leads to the repetition of terrible tragedies. The proof of this is the crimes once morest civilians, the ethnic cleansing (and) the punitive actions organized by the neo-Nazis in Ukraine”, denounced the same day in a statement Vladimir Putin.
A rhetoric which the Russian head of state is accustomed to defending the Russian military offensive.
“On the day of the liberation of the German Hitler death camps Auschwitz-Birkenau, let us remember that Putin is building new camps in the east,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reacted sharply. The head of French diplomacy Catherine Colonna blasted Mr. Putin’s “appalling” and “shocking” statements.
This article has been published automatically. Sources: ats / afp
