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The Ukrainian president hopes the Russian attacks will intensify with this week’s EU summit. According to Reuters


© Reuters. A woman walks past destroyed structures at a local market after recent shelling during the Ukraine-Russia conflict in Donetsk, Ukraine June 19, 2022. REUTERS / Alexander Ermochenko

By Natalia Zinets and Max Hunder

KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy predicts Russia will escalate attacks this week as European Union leaders consider whether to back Kyiv and Moscow’s bid to join the bloc. promoted his campaign to gain control of the eastern part of the country.

“Clearly, this week we should expect from Russia an intensification of their hostile activities,” Zelenskiy said in his Sunday night video speech. “We’re getting ready. We’re getting ready.”

Ukraine applied to join the EU four days after Russian troops overran the border in February. The EU’s executive body, the European Commission, on Friday recommended that Ukraine accept the nomination.

The leaders of the 27-nation coalition will consider the question at a summit meeting on Thursday and Friday and are expected to endorse Ukraine’s application despite doubts from some member states . This process can take years to complete.

The EU’s embrace of Ukraine would thwart one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated goals when he ordered his troops into Ukraine: to keep Moscow’s southern neighbor out of the Western sphere of influence. West.

On Friday, Mr Putin said Moscow had “nothing against” Ukraine’s EU membership, but a Kremlin spokesman said Russia was closely following Kyiv’s efforts, especially in the context of the EU alliance. Defense cooperation among member countries is enhanced.

On the battlefield, Russian forces are trying to gain full control of the eastern Donbas region, parts of which were already held by Russian-backed separatists before the February 24 invasion.

The main target of Moscow’s eastern offensive was the industrial city of Sievierodonetsk. On Sunday, Russia said it had captured Metyolkine, a village on the outskirts, and Russian state news agency TASS reported that many Ukrainian fighters had surrendered there. Ukraine’s military says Russia has had “partial success” in the region.

Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukrainian TV channel that a Russian attack on Toshkivka, 35 kilometers (20 miles) south of Sievierodonetsk, also “had a degree of success”.

In Sievierodonetsk itself, a city of 100,000 people before the war, Gaidai said that Russia controlled “the main part” but not the whole town after intense fighting. Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield accounts.

Both Russia and Ukraine have continued their intense bombing raids around Sievierodonetsk “with little change to the front lines”, the UK Ministry of Defense said on Sunday.

Gaidai said that in the twin city of Lysychansk of Sievierodonetsk, residential buildings and private houses were destroyed by Russian shelling. “People are dying on the streets and in bomb shelters,” he added.

He later said 19 people had been evacuated on Sunday. “We are trying to mobilize humanitarian aid and evacuate people as best we can,” Gaidai said.

‘WAR WILL HAVE THE LAST YEARS’

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think-tank, wrote in a note that “Russian forces will likely capture Sievierodonetsk in the coming weeks, but at a cost The answer is to concentrate most of their existing forces on this battle. It’s a small area.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the Ukraine conflict could drag on for years and called on Western governments to continue sending state-of-the-art weapons to Ukraine’s military, Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported.

“We have to prepare for the fact that it could take years. We must not give up on supporting Ukraine,” Mr. Stoltenberg said.

Russia said it had launched what it called a “special military operation” to disarm the neighboring country and protect Russian-speaking people there from dangerous nationalists. Kyiv and its allies dismiss that as a baseless pretext for a war of aggression.

The British military assessment said the morale of Ukrainian and Russian combat units in the Donbas could be “changing”.

The UK Ministry of Defense said: “Ukrainian forces have likely deserted in recent weeks, however, Russian morale is most likely still struggling. Twitter (NYSE:).

In Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, northwest of Luhansk, the Russian Defense Ministry said its Iskander missiles destroyed weapons recently supplied by Western countries.

Russian forces are trying to reach Kharkiv, which was heavily shelled earlier in the war, and turn it into a “frontline city”, an Interior Ministry official said.

In southern Ukraine, Western weapons have helped Ukrainian forces advance 10 kilometers (6 miles) toward Russian-occupied Melitopol, the country’s mayor said in a video posted on Telegram from outside the city.

An EU decision in favor of Kyiv becoming a member would eventually put Ukraine on track to realize aspirations that the former Soviet republic was out of reach before it was invaded by Russia.

“A whole generation fought for a chance to escape the prison of the Soviet Union and, like a free bird, fly to European civilization,” Ukrainian parliament speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said in a statement. declare.

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