Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to the southern region of Kherson, extending his tour of the country’s front line after a trip to Bakhmut a day previously. More than 50 villages in Kherson had been “almost completely destroyed,” he said in his nightly address Thursday, adding that in some locations 90 percent of the buildings lay in ruins.
European Union leaders the same day reiterated their economic and military support of Ukraine, promising to jointly deliver 1 million artillery rounds over the next year. They said they will also provide missiles, upon Kyiv’s request. E.U. member states have made available about $73 billion to Ukraine since the war began, the bloc said. Slovakia, meanwhile, delivered four of the 13 MiG-29 fighter jets it has pledged to Ukraine, its defense minister said.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Between Avdiivka and Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces fight Russia on tough terrain: For Ukrainian soldiers outside the town of Niu-York, in the eastern Donetsk region, shelling and destruction have been a part of life since 2014 when Russian forces and their separatist proxies began seizing territory in Donbas. Now, they are caught between two raging battles: one to the northeast in Bakhmut and another to the southwest in Avdiivka, report Alex Horton and Anastacia Galouchka.
A breakout in those areas, leaders have said, would strangle supply routes into the area and risk units here becoming encircled. In this grinding war, with advances made in feet, not miles, the joining of Russian troops, from north and south, into a unified westward-pushing line of attack would be a major triumph, and would further President Vladimir Putin’s goal of seizing all of Donetsk region, as well as three others: Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
