Volodymyr Zelensky visited Kherson after a trip to Bakhmut, where Russia is losing strength in attacks

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky visited on Thursday the southern region of Kherson, from the northern part of which a third of Russian troops were withdrawn in November, after traveling the previous day to the Kharkiv region and the Bakhmut Front, where fewer than 3,500 civilians and Russians are resisting. mercenaries are losing oxygen, Kyiv believes.

This is the second visit of the president to Kherson after the one he made on November 14, three days after the liberation of the regional capital and the right bank of the Dnieper in the province of the same name, which Russia it was annexed in September along with the Lugansk, Donetsk and Zaporozhye regions.

An attempt to clear the left bank in Kherson

Despite the withdrawal of Russian troops to the left bank of the Dnieper, this does not mean that almost daily shelling is not carried out in the regional center and its environs, Natalya Gumenyuk, press secretary of the Southern Command of the Armed Forces, recalled today. Ukraine.

It was on Thursday that the Russian army also shelled the city of Berislav in the Kherson region.

“We are working to make the enemy feel our presence, our pressure. In particular, as part of an artillery duel, we are trying to clear the territory from 20 to 30 kilometers along the left bank,” he said.

Zelensky walked around the city of Posad-Pokrovskoye, not far from the administrative border of Mykolaiv, where many residential buildings and social infrastructure were damaged as a result of Russian aggression, where electricity and water supply are being restored, and the local clinic is being restored.

promises of reconstruction

Zelensky also visited one of the energy facilities in the region and held a meeting on the security situation, reconstruction and demining in the region.

“We will restore everything, we will rebuild everything,” he promised.

The President of Ukraine took the opportunity to thank the fighters for protecting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. Ukraine and decorate them.

Zelensky arrived in southern Ukraine after visiting the eastern Kharkiv region and the front. bahmutin the Donetsk region and is currently the main site of hostilities.

Kharkov Governorate was occupied by Russia for several months until Ukrainian forces managed to liberate it in early September.

The President, who visited the wounded soldiers recovering in the hospital and held a meeting with the military command about the situation in the region, also presented the Mayor of the capital of the same name, Igor Terekhov, with the Order of the Hero City. from Ukraine“For never giving up control of it to the Russians.

Russia is losing oxygen in Bakhmut

But it was in the zone bahmut in which Zelenskiy took his biggest risk on his second visit to this front since December to greet and reward the soldiers who have defended this walled city for eight months, where urban fighting is taking place and which, according to Wagner mercenaries, is 70% controlled by them.

Western analysts reduce this percentage to 50%.

So much Ukraine since the UK and the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW) agree that the pace of the Russian offensive around bahmut it has slowed amid reports that Kremlin troops will try to start fighting in other areas, such as Avdiivka, further south.

Commander of the Ground Forces UkraineColonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky said today that Russian mercenaries are “significantly losing strength and oxygen” and that the Ukrainian army “will very soon take advantage of this opportunity” to push the Russians out of the area.

Western analysts emphasize that Russian troops are still making little progress in the south. bahmutand Ukrainian troops are conducting counteroffensives in the southwest and northwest.

As Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner group, said today, Ukrainian forces have concentrated more than 80,000 troops in the immediate vicinity to defend this front.

Despite the slowdown in the offensive, Bakhmut remains the epicenter of hostilities today, followed by the Kupyansk-Liman Front (in Kharkiv and Donetsk, respectively), a representative of the Eastern Group of the Russian Armed Forces said. UkraineSergei Cherevaty.

Less than 3,500 civilians resist

IN bahmutwhich had about 70,000 residents before the war, fewer than 3,500 Ukrainian civilians still resist leaving the city, including 32 minors, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk military administration, explained on Thursday.

He acknowledged that Russian troops are also being “activated” in the direction of Avdiivka, where about 31,000 people lived before the war, and now there are about 2,000 civilians left.

The commander of the operational-strategic group “Tavria”, which is fighting in the Donbas, Alexander Tarnavsky confirmed that “the enemy is trying to conduct assault operations in the area of ​​​​Avdeevka and Maryinka.”

(As reported by EFE)

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