Ukraine will emerge victorious from the war started by Russia, its president Volodimir Zelensky said on Friday after 100 days. of the invasion launched by Moscow, whose troops are intensifying their offensive in the eastern region of Donbas.
(Read: United Nations: the war in Ukraine ‘will have no winner’)
Thousands of people have died, millions have fled their homes and entire towns are in ruins. since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to invade Ukraine on February 24.
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The advance of the Russian army was slowed down by the strong resistance of the Ukrainians, that they succeeded in thwarting a lightning offensive to bring down the pro-Western government in kyiv and that forced Moscow to turn east, to conquer the Donbas mining basin.
State representatives are here, defending Ukraine for a hundred days.
Despite this Western-backed resistance, Zelensky acknowledged that Russia has tripled the portion of Ukrainian territory under its control. With the Crimean peninsula annexed in 2014 and the areas of Donbas and southern Ukraine under its power, Russia now has some 125,000 km2 of its neighbor occupied.
The Ukrainian president sought to convey a message of confidence to his fellow citizens this Friday in a video broadcast from the presidency in kyiv, together with the country’s high command. “Victory will be ours,” he stated.
For its part, the Kremlin stated that it had achieved “certain” objectives in these 100 days of offensive, according to Russian presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov, who noted that the troops liberated numerous towns from what he described as “pro-Nazi armed forces of Ukraine”. “.
Total destruction
Putin’s troops are concentrated in Donbas and the battle is especially fierce in the city of Severodonetsk. The fighting continues in the center of the city and, according to the Ukrainian presidency, the invaders are “bombing civil infrastructure and military buildings”.
“Since a hundred days, [los rusos] they destroy everything that differentiated the Lugansk region,” said regional governor Sergei Gaiday. The local official accused the Russians of razing hospitals, schools and roads, but stressed that the population clings to the territory.
The bombings are getting more and more intense.
Gaiday said that Ukrainian troops are holding out in an industrial area, a situation reminiscent of the one in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, where soldiers barricaded themselves in a steel mill until they finally surrendered in late May. .
The situation in Lysychansk, the twin city across the river from Severodonetsk, also appears dire. Nearly 60% of homes have been destroyed and internet, mobile phone and gas networks have been cut off, Mayor Oleksandr Zaika reported.
Every day “the situation worsens”
The other region of Donbas, Donetsk, is not exempt from hostilities, especially in Sloviansk, some 80 km west of Severodonetsk, whose inhabitants are desperately fleeing the city, where there is no water or electricity.
“The situation is getting worse, the explosions are getting more and more intense and the bombs are falling more and more often.”Gulnara Evgaripova, an 18-year-old student boarding an evacuation bus, told AFP.
Faced with the Russian steamroller, the Ukrainian army, which loses between 60 and 100 soldiers daily according to Zelensky, is waiting for the rapid arrival of the advanced Himars missile systems promised by the United States.
Backed by arms shipments from the United States and its NATO allies, the Ukrainian military has managed to hold off the larger and better-equipped Russian army, turning the conflict into a war of attrition.
“We must prepare for the long term (…) because what we see is that this war has now become a war of attritionNATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said after meeting with US President Joe Biden.
The UN coordinator for the crisis in Ukraine, Amid Awad, warned this Friday that the war “will not have a winner” and stressed that the conflict “has implied a high price for civilians” citing “the lives, houses, jobs and lost prospects.
Africa, an unregarded victim
Western countries and their allies seek to stifle the Russian economy with a sanctions package, hoping this will force Putin to relent. On Thursday the countries of the European Union approved a sixth package of measures against Russia, which includes an embargo with exceptions to oil purchases.
The sanctions seek to weaken the Russian economy, but according to the Russian Deputy Prime Minister in charge of Energy, Alexander Novak, the Europeans will be the first to “suffer” the oil embargo.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel of crude producers and its 10 partners, a group that includes Russia, agreed on Thursday to increase production to curb rising prices.
But this measure failed to calm investors and oil prices continued to rise. Faced with the escalation of food prices, due to the fact that Ukraine is one of the largest cereal producers in the world, the president of the African Union, the Senegalese leader Macky Sall, met with Putin.
Sall stated that Africa is a “victim” of this conflict, due to the rise in grain prices, and advocated that Russian food products remain outside the sanctions.
Russia ‘has met targets’
The President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, has published on his social networks a video that he has recorded himself in which he is seen surrounded by his closest team and in which ensures that “we are still here” defending the country from the Russian invasion, which is a hundred days old today.
The Prime Minister, Denis Shmigalia, and the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, are some of those who appear with Zelensky in this recording in which he affirms that, after defending Ukraine for a hundred days, the fight continues in search of victory.
After listing the advisers who are accompanying him, the president underlines that “our team is much larger”, adding that the most important thing is the people of the country and specifies that these people are with them.
Twenty percent of the occupied territory, dead and wounded soldiers on the battlefront, civilians killed in the bombardments and siege of their towns, uncultivated fields due to the fighting and the absence of workers, and millions of people who have had to flee from the country are some of the serious consequences of the conflict.
The Kremlin claimed this Friday to have achieved “certain” objectives after 100 days of offensive against Ukraineafter having “liberated numerous localities”, allowing its inhabitants to return to “a life in peace”.
“Regarding the security (of the population of Donbas), measures have been taken and certain results are beginning to be achieved,” the spokesman for the Russian presidency explained to the press, who considers that “many localities were liberated from the pro-Nazi armed forces Ukraine, as well as nationalist elements”.
This work will continue until all the objectives of the special military operation are achieved.
For Moscow, which has considered kyiv’s pro-Western policy a threat for years, it is an operation to “denazify” Ukrainian power.
Nevertheless, the Russian assault on kyiv failed and the Russian army is now concentrating on Donbaswhere Russia again encountered problems in its advance despite heavy fighting in recent weeks.
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