Zelenskiy, Putin visit troops in Ukraine amid fighting
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has visited troops in the small eastern city of Avdiivka, his office says, as Russian President Vladimir Putin met his commanders in two regions of Ukraine while Russian forces stepped up heavy artillery bombardments and air strikes on Bakhmut city.
Avdiivka has been one of the main targets of a winter offensive which was intended to reinvigorate Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, but has made only small territorial advances in the east.
Video footage released by Zelenskiy’s office showed him addressing troops in combat gear and handing them awards in what appeared to be a large industrial warehouse with sandbags packed against at least one of the high walls.
“I have the honour to be here today, to thank you for your service, for defending our land, Ukraine, our families,” he said.
“I wish you only victory – this is what I wish for every Ukrainian, this is what is very important to all of us.”
Zelenskiy was briefed by commanders on the battlefield situation, his office said, and also visited a hospital where he met wounded soldiers and handed out awards.
The video footage also showed heavily damaged high-rise residential buildings in Avdiivka, where officials say about 1800 civilians remain.
Zelenskiy has visited troops several times in recent weeks before what is widely expected to be a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Zelenskiy was accompanied in Avdiivka by Andriy Yermak, the head of his office, who said Ukrainian troops were preventing Russia encircling the city.
He said fierce battles were under way elsewhere in the region, and that “successful defence” was key in these places.
“Our army has already broken the enemy’s plans to break through the (Ukrainian) defences and advance in the east,” Yermak said on the Telegram messaging app.
Fighting has raged in and around Bakhmut in Donetsk region for months, with Ukrainian forces holding out despite regular claims by Russia to have taken the city.
“Currently, the enemy is increasing the activity of heavy artillery and the number of air strikes, turning the city into ruins,” the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Tuesday.
Bakhmut’s capture could provide a stepping stone for Russia to advance on two bigger cities it has long coveted in the Donetsk region – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin also met troops this week during visits on Monday to Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.
The Kremlin said Putin had attended a military command meeting in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region and visited a national guard headquarters in eastern Luhansk.
Putin heard reports from commanders of the airborne forces and the Dnieper army group as well as other senior officers who briefed him on the situation in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the south.
Neither Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu nor Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov joined Putin on his trip as a security precaution, the Kremlin said.
A senior Ukrainian presidential aide, Mykhailo Podolyak, took to Twitter to mock Putin’s trip as a “‘special tour’ of the mass murders’ author in the occupied and ruined territories to enjoy the crimes of his minions for the last time”.
Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk are the four regions that Putin proclaimed annexed last September following what Ukraine said were sham referendums.
Russian forces only partly control the four regions.
Russian troops retreated from Kherson city, the regional capital, last November, and have been reinforcing their positions on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River in anticipation of a Ukrainian counteroffensive this spring.
While numerous foreign leaders have made their way to Kyiv for talks with Zelenskiy since Russian forces invaded 14 months ago, Putin has rarely visited parts of Ukraine under Russian control.
Last month, he visited Crimea – annexed by Russia in 2014 – and the southeastern city of Mariupol in Donetsk region.
Reuters
