Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says the Donbas region to the southeast has been completely destroyed, as it has become the recent focus of the Russian offensive
In the southern port city of Mariupol, scene of the war's bloodiest siege, the last heavily wounded fighters from hold-out Ukrainian units had been evacuated from their bastion, the Azovstal steelworks, their commander said.It was not clear if the remaining defenders there had definitively laid down their arms.
"We do not know how many people died, because it is simply impossible to go through and look at every apartment," he said. An industrial region, Donbas compromises the Donetsk and Luhansk areas, parts of which were already controlled by Moscow-backed separatists before the war. Shoigu said Russian troops and separatist militias were expanding their control there.Russia's focus on the Donbas follows its failure to capture the capital Kyiv in the early stages of the invasion launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24.
Analysts say that while Russian forces have advanced in Luhansk, they have made less progress in Donetsk. They have also been pushed back from the city of Kharkiv, north of the Donbas and close to the Russian border.View of the rubble after a building was hit by what was reported to be an air strike, during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Bakhmut, Donetsk Region, Ukraine, in this handout picture released May 19, 2022.
British military intelligence said as many as 1,700 soldiers were likely to have surrendered at the plant. Russian Defence Minister Shoigu put the number of those laying down their arms at about 2,000.
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