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Ukraine’s Zelenskiy says it will fight for all territory amid fierce battle in east

Kyiv/Druzhkiva, Ukraine
Reuters

Ukraine will fight to recover all its territory occupied by Russian forces, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday, as his troops struggled to hold their ground in bloody street-to-street fighting in the city of Sievierodonetsk.

“We have already lost too many people to simply cede our territory,” Zelenskiy said by video link at an event hosted by Britain’s Financial Times newspaper. “We have to achieve a full deoccupation of our entire territory.”

Ukraine Donetsk M777 Howitzer

Ukrainian service members fire a shell from a M777 Howitzer near a frontline, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Donetsk Region, Ukraine, on 6th June. PICTURE: Reuters/Stringer.

Zelenskiy’s remarks responded forcefully to suggestions that Ukraine must cede territory to Russia to end the war, now in its fourth month.

RUSSIA RETURNS BODIES OF 210 UKRAINIAN FIGHTERS TO KYIV – MILITARY

Russia has handed over to Kyiv the bodies of 210 Ukrainian fighters, most of whom who died defending the city of Mariupol from Russian forces at a vast steel works, the Ukrainian military said on Tuesday.

Ukrainians were holed up in the Azovstal steelworks for weeks as Russia tried to capture the city. The Ukrainian soldiers eventually surrendered last month and were taken into custody by Russia.

“The process of returning the bodies of the fallen defenders of Mariupol is under way. To date, 210 of our troops have been returned – most of them are heroic defenders of Azovstal,” Ukraine’s defence intelligence directorate said on Twitter.

There has been little information about the fate of the estimated 2,000 Azovstal defenders. Kyiv is seeking the handover of all in a prisoner swap, but some Russian lawmakers want some of the soldiers put on trial.

“Work continues on bringing home all of the captured Ukrainian defenders,” said the directorate.

The families of Ukraine’s Azov unit of the national guard had earlier reported the return of some bodies.

Last week an exchange of 160 bodies between Russia and Ukraine was announced by Ukraine’s Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories.

“It’s important to note that a third of the bodies [handed over] were Azov fighters, the affiliation of the other fighters to different units is being clarified,” the families said in a statement on Monday.

Russia casts the Azov Regiment, which led the defence of the steel works at Mariupol, as a “Nazi” militia with radical far-right origins.

Ukraine denies that, saying the unit has been reformed and integrated into its armed forces and is outside politics.

– NATALIA ZINETS and DAVID LJUNGGREN/Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron said in a recent interview it was important not to “humiliate” Moscow, comments interpreted in Ukraine as implying it must accept some Russian demands.

Asked about Macron’s comments, Zelenskiy said: “We are not going to humiliate anyone, we are going to respond in kind.”

As he spoke, Ukrainian troops in the ruins of Sievierodonetsk were trying to cling to gains Kyiv said its forces had made in a surprise counter-offensive that shifted momentum there last week.

The Governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Gaidai, said the defenders were finding it hard to repel Russian attacks in the centre of Sievierodonetsk, a small industrial city in the east. 

“The Russians are trying with all their might to capture Sievierodonetsk and cut off the highway from Lysychansk to Bakhmut,” he said in an online post. “In the regional centre it is hard to stave off the attacks, but the occupiers do not control the town.”

Moscow said its troops have been advancing. Reuters could not independently verify the situation on the ground.

Under bombardment
The fight for Sievierodonetsk has emerged as a pivotal battle, with Russia focusing its offensive might in the hope of achieving one of its stated aims – to fully capture surrounding Luhansk province on behalf of separatist proxies.

Ukrainian officials had said their forces staged a surprise counter-attack last week, driving the Russians from a swathe of the city centre.

Before that, Russia had seemed on the verge of encircling Ukraine’s garrison in Luhansk, attempting to cut off the main road to Sievierodonetsk and its twin city Lysychansk across the Siverskiy Donets river. 

Gaidai said in his post that Lysychansk was under constant bombardment.

Russia invaded Ukraine on 24th February saying it aimed to “disarm” and “denazify” the country. Ukraine and its Western backers say Russia launched an unprovoked war to grab territory.

Russia’s troops were defeated on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv in March and it has since regrouped and ramped up an assault on the east, demanding Kyiv recognise its territorial claim to the Crimea peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014, and the claims of its separatist proxies in Luhansk and Donetsk, the southeastern provinces together known as the Donbas.

Russia has been pressing from three main directions – east, north and south – to try to encircle the Ukrainians in the Donbas. 



In Druzhkivka, in the Ukrainian-held pocket of Donetsk province, residents were sifting through the wreckage of houses obliterated by the latest shelling.

Nadezhda picked up a pink children’s photo album and kindergarten exercise book from the ruins of her house, and put them on a shelf somehow still standing in the rubble.

“I do not even know where to start. I am standing here looking but I have no idea what to do. I start crying, I calm down, then I cry again.”

Ukraine Druzhkivka resident

A local resident Nelya reacts near her building destroyed by Russian military strike, amid Russia’s invasion on Ukraine, in the town of Druzhkivka, in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on 6th June. PICTURE: Reuters/Gleb Garanich

“Time to leave”
The Donetsk Regional Governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, told Ukrainian television there was constant shelling along the front line, with Russia attempting to push towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the two biggest Ukrainian-held cities in Donetsk.

Efforts were underway to evacuate remaining residents, he said: “People are now understanding, though it is late, that it is time to leave.”

Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, was also hit by shelling early on Tuesday, and the local mayor said one person was killed. The northeastern city came under intense bombardment in the first two months of the war, but had been quieter in recent weeks after Russian forces retreated in the region.

Viacheslav Shulga, an employee at a pizzeria in the north of Kharkiv that was hit, said there had been hopes the restaurant could reopen soon after shutting at the start of the war.

“Everything is destroyed. We are removing equipment, there will be no business here for now,” he said. “It is sad as so much effort was invested in it. But someone else has decided our destiny.” 


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Warehouses destroyed
Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest exporters of grain, and Western countries accuse Russia of creating the risk of global famine by shutting Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. 

The governor of the region that included the port of Mykolaiv said weekend shelling had destroyed warehouses in one of the country’s largest agricultural commodities terminals.

Moscow denies responsibility for the international food crisis, blaming Western sanctions.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said the Russian-occupied Ukrainian ports of Berdyansk and Mariupol were ready to resume grain exports. Ukraine says any such shipments from territory seized by Moscow would amount to illegal looting.

Zelenskiy said Kyiv was gradually receiving “specific anti-ship systems”, the best way to break a Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports.

The Kremlin said that for exports to resume from Ukrainian-held ports, Kyiv must first clear them of mines. Russia could then inspect and escort ships to international waters, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

– With reporting by Reuters bureaux.

 

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