News of the Russian war on Ukraine: Zelensky says Ukraine will not yield a centimeter

(Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelensky said his forces would not yield “a centimeter” in battles for control of the eastern Donetsk region, while Russian-appointed officials described Ukrainian troops moving tanks into a southern town.

fighting and strife

* Focal points of the conflict in the Donetsk industrial region revolve around the towns of Bakhmut, Solidar and Avdiivka, the scene of the country’s heaviest fighting since Russian forces invaded its neighbor in late February.

– A statement of the Ukrainian army, on Tuesday evening, accused the Russian forces of continuing to loot and destroy infrastructure in the southern city of Kherson, where a confrontation has loomed for weeks in the only regional capital that Russia has controlled since its invasion.

* Russian artillery bombed more than 30 settlements in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, and in the Zaporizhia region, the Russian authorities forced residents to accept Russian passports after confiscating their Ukrainian documents, according to the statement.

* The Russian-appointed mayor of the town of Snehorivka, east of the southern city of Mykolaiv, was quoted by the RIA news agency as saying on Tuesday that residents had seen Ukrainian tanks and that heavy fighting was continuing.

Reuters was unable to verify the Ukrainian reports.

* The Minister of Defense of Ukraine said that Ukraine received its first delivery of NASAMS and Apside air defense systems.

– Russian Interfax news agency reported that Putin said that 50,000 Russian soldiers who were called up as part of his mobilization campaign are now fighting with combat units in Ukraine.

Diplomacy

Ukraine has doubled down on its tough stance on negotiations with Russia, saying that it can only resume once the Kremlin gives up all Ukrainian territory, and that Kyiv will fight even if it is “stabbed in the back” by its allies.

* The Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, said that the main condition for the resumption of negotiations with Russia is the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

– Mykhailo Podolak, a senior presidential adviser, said that Ukraine has never refused to negotiate with Russia and is ready to hold talks with its future leader but not with Vladimir Putin. His comments followed a Washington Post report that said the Biden administration had been encouraging Ukrainian leaders in particular to signal an openness to negotiation.

quotes

“The activity of the occupiers is still at a very high level – dozens of attacks every day … We will not give up one centimeter of our land,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.

Written by Michael Berry. Lincoln Fest Editing.

Our criteria: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.