Ukraine: Zelensky, on the front line near Bakhmout, promises military victory | War in Ukraine
Ukrainian soldiers march near Bakhmout on March 22, 2023.
President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled on Wednesday near Bakhmut, the epicenter of the front and symbol of Ukrainian resistance in the east of the country, where he promised a military victory over “terrorist” Russia, the day after #x27;an appeal for peace launched without convincing from Moscow by the Chinese head of state Xi Jinping.
The declarations of the Ukrainian president, who came to reinforce his troops as close as possible to the fighting near Bakhmout, then in Kharkiv, a large city in the northeast, followed new deadly strikes by the Russian army. These claimed the lives of at least seven civilians in the Kiev region and hit a residential building in Zaporizhia head-on, killing at least one person and injuring dozens.
< p class="e-p">We will definitely respond […] to all attacks on our cities, Zelensky said in a video message.
“Here in the Donbass, in the Kharkiv region, wherever the Russian evil has come, it appears obvious that this terrorist state cannot be stopped other than by our victory. ”
— Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine
Russia will lose this war, the Ukrainian president said again.
Previously, Mr. Zelensky had posted on Telegram a video of his trip near Bakhmout, a city threatened with encirclement by Russian forces. We see him in a black sweater in a concrete hangar, with heavily armed soldiers to whom he gives medals.
His trip, the second on this part of the front where he had already visited in December, came just hours after Chinese President Xi Jinping left Moscow, following a summit the day before with Vladimir Putin.
Displaying an alliance with the West, the limits of which he has barely defined with his Russian counterpart, the Chinese president has put a plan for settling the conflict back on the table, which the Russian side has said it agrees to consider but that Westerners, led by the United States, suspected of only being able to consolidate Russian territorial gains.
Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a signing ceremony following their talks at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, March 21, 2023.
The United States, which had warned Beijing against any delivery of weapons of war to Moscow, estimated on Wednesday that China had not at this stage crossed the line of these deliveries.
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I think the diplomatic, political, and to some extent material support [from China] to Russia is of course against our interest in seeing this war end, the Secretary of State stressed, however. Antony Blinken in Congress.
In the immediate future, in Chassiv Iar, a small town west of Bakhmout, subject to constant Russian bombardment, AFP journalists saw columns of Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles, including of British and French manufacture, speeding towards Bakhmout or returning, armed soldiers perched on the armour.
In the center of Chassiv Iar, a huge crater has ripped open the courtyard of an apartment building. Further on, a school has been destroyed.
Residents get into a minibus to flee. We can't take it anymore. Our nerves are giving out, says a man, who is leaving town with his parents.
Earlier Wednesday, Russia launched 21 Iranian-made Shahed-136/131 combat drones against Ukraine, an operation that began shortly before midnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said, claiming to have shot down 16.
Besides sending these murderous Iranian drones, the Russians, according to this source, fired missiles, there were many bombardments.
Seven people died and nine others were injured in Rzhyshchiv, about 80 kilometers south of Kiev, in a drone raid that hit a vocational high school overnight Tuesday-Wednesday, according to Andriy Nebytov, the region's police chief from Kyiv.
In another strike, at least one person was killed and 34 others injured, including three children, according to the rescue, when two Russian missiles fell on a residential building in Zaporizhia, in the center-east, according to a final report from the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior.
Building damaged after an airstrike in the city of Zaporizhia, March 22, 2023.
Russia, for its part, assured that it had repelled a marine drone attack on Sevastopol, the home port of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, in southern Crimea on Wednesday.
Since the beginning of the offensive against Ukraine, Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, has been the target of combat drones several times, without Kiev claiming responsibility for the attacks.
In his Wednesday evening video message, Volodymyr Zelensky promised the Crimean Tatars, a local Muslim community, that Ramadan which begins on Thursday would be the last they would experience under the threat of Russian repression.
Finally in The Hague, the legislative body of the International Criminal Court on Wednesday denounced threats emanating from Russia against members of the International Criminal Court after it issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for the war crime of deporting Ukrainian children.
