(ANSA-AFP) - KYIV, MAY 24 - Russian forces on Tuesday stepped
up their offensive on the last pocket of resistance around
Lugansk in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, as the conflict
entered its fourth month. Since Moscow's invasion in late
February, Western support has helped Ukraine hold off its
neighbour's advances in many areas -- including the capital Kyiv
-- but Russia is now focused on securing and expanding its gains
in Donbas and the southern coast. "The coming weeks of the war
will be difficult, and we must be aware of that," Ukraine's
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday in his nightly address
after regional leaders and residents reported heavy
bombardments. "The most difficult fighting situation today is in
Donbas," Zelensky said, singling out the worst-hit towns of
Bakhmut, Popasna and Severodonetsk. The governor of Lugansk, in
Donbas, said that Russia has sent thousands of troops to capture
his entire region and that Severodonetsk was under massive
attack, warning residents that it was too late to evacuate. "At
this point I will not say: get out, evacuate. Now I will say:
stay in a shelter," Sergiy Gaidai said on Telegram. "Because
such a density of shelling will not allow us to calmly gather
people and come for them." Residents of Bakhmut, a crucial
junction that serves as a command centre for much of the
Ukrainian war effort, told AFP of the aerial onslaught they had
suffered. (ANSA-AFP).
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