Russia announces that the “complete liberation” of Donbas has begun

With tens of thousands of soldiers arrived as reinforcements and deployed in the surrounding areas, Russia announced this Tuesday the start of his offense to gain complete control of the donbas region, whose independence the Kremlin recognized a few days before the start of the war. The fightingthe bombing and the skirmishes between the armies of Russia and Ukraine have multiplied throughout the day this Tuesday throughout the 480 kilometers that make up the front line between both sides. According to many observers, Moscow tries to get a victory on your opponent the holiday of May 9in which the country commemorates the victory of the USSR on Nazi Germany.

Only on the night from Monday to Tuesday, the military commanders of Russia have claimed to have attacked more than a thousand goals in enemy territory. According to the defense minister, Sergei Shoiguthe Russian Army had “neutralized” a total of 13 Ukrainian military positions and had bombed a few”60 military targets”. According to the same source, Russian forces had destroyed two missile stores and shot down a Ukrainian fighter. Shoigu considers that the Russian military operation is achieving the objectives that had been consideredflatly rejects the versions that speak of a bogging down of the Kremlin Army in the neighboring country, while accusing the West of prolonging the war artificially through the arms shipments: “the growing volume of arms supplies demonstrates the intention to provoke the kyiv regime to fight to a man”.

Despite the military reinforcements and the re-launch of the Russian military offensive, now with more modest goalsthe president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyhas maintained its usual defiant tone: “It doesn’t matter how many soldiers are brought here; we will fight, we will defend ourselves“, the president warned, shortly after announcing the offensive. For his part, Ihor Terekhovmayor of Kharkov, which concentrates a good part of the russian war effortshas assured the BBC that the city was rejecting “well“the attacks launched by the”enemy“.

Mariupol, the main Ukrainian port on the Sea of ​​Azov, continues to be the main obstacle for Moscow’s aspirations to seize a strip of territory in the east of the country that has territorial continuity. The last Ukrainian forces keep entrenched in the huge Azovstal steel plant, and they refuse to give up. The Russian Defense Ministry issued a final ultimatum consisting of a Stop the fire “from noon” so that “all units of the Ukrainian Army without exception and all the mercenaries come out no weapons no ammunition“. “If they do, they will save their lives,” the warning concluded.

In these early hours of Donbas offensiveas has happened throughout the Russian siege of Mariupol, the humanitarian corridors they have not worked, and numerous civilians have not been able to be evacuated from their homes before the arrival of the Russian forces, becoming, in the words of the governor of the Luhansk region, Sergei Gaidai, “hostages” of Moscow. kyiv has repeatedly accused Russia of taking back the practice of deportation with a good number of Ukrainian citizens residents of the towns conquered by his troops.

Without humanitarian corridors, civilians caught up in the hostilities cannot flee. “We do not have any more moneyneither gasoline; we can’t leave,” lamented Nadia, a neighbor from Novodruzheska Mining town from eastern Ukraine. “We are being bombarded from all sides; it is a miracle that let’s stay alive“, he continued.