Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday visited Bakhmut, a city in Donetsk that Russian forces have been trying to capture for months and is currently the “hottest” point on the front in eastern Ukraine, an official source said.
🇧🇷[Zelensky] met soldiers, talked to them and decorated them,” the Ukrainian presidency’s press service said.
While Zelensky regularly travels to areas near the front lines, the visit to Bakhmut in the Donbass region proves to be the riskiest of all trips.
“Zelensky in Bakhmut. The bravest president of the bravest nation,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on social media.
President @ZelenskyyUa is now in Bakhmut. The bravest president of the bravest nation https://t.co/Xg1pzJQeVZ
– Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) December 20, 2022
Since the summer, the Russians have been trying to take Bakhmut, once known for its vineyards and salt mines and with a population of some 70,000 before the invasion of Moscow at the end of February.
In recent months, the city has become the scene of violent clashes, with many casualties on both sides, due to exhausting trench warfare, heavy artillery duels and frontal assaults.
While Russian troops claim to have taken villages and areas around the city, Ukrainian troops appear to have control of Bakhmut and part of the surrounding area.
“Russian forces are said to have lost positions south of Bakhmut on December 18 and continued ground attacks near Bakhmut and the city of Donetsk,” the analysis center of the Institute for the Study of War, based in the United States, said in a Monday statement. report.
The military offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine on February 24 caused at least 6.5 million internally displaced people and more than 7.8 million refugees to European countries, so the United Nations classifies this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II World War (1939-1945). ).
Currently, 17.7 million Ukrainians need humanitarian aid and 9.3 million need food aid and shelter.
The UN presented 6,755 civilian deaths and 10,607 wounded as confirmed since the start of the war, underlining that these numbers are far below the real ones.
Source: DN
