Russia and Ukraine: Kyiv replaces the Minister of Defense and the army faces a “very difficult situation” in the east of the country

Reznikov had held a press conference earlier Sunday, in which he said Ukraine was ready for an expected renewed Russian offensive, even if it came before the delivery of new weapons promised to Kyiv’s Western allies.

The news of the replacement of the defense minister came hours after the Ukrainian president admitted that his country’s army was facing a “very difficult situation” in several cities on the eastern front, with renewed Russian bombing of the region.

Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Ukrainian forces are facing a difficult situation in three of the most contested cities in the Donetsk region, in the east of the country; It is Bakhmut, Vahlidar and Liman, stressing that the difficulty of the situation is exacerbating in those cities with Russia sending more combat forces to the region.

British military intelligence said that the Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut suffer more isolation over time due to the attempts of the Russian forces to surround the city.

Reports indicated that two main roads in the city have come under direct fire from Russia. The commander of the Wagner mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, confirmed that there was fierce fighting in Bakhmut, but he denied that there was a retreat by the Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine is under a new Russian attack in the besieged Donetsk region, which witnessed renewed Russian bombing last Saturday, according to local officials who said on Saturday.

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said, “The Russian occupation forces focused their efforts this week on penetrating our defenses and besieging Bakhmut, and launched a fierce attack on the Liman sector, but thanks to the steadfastness of our soldiers, they did not succeed in that.”

The Ukrainian border guards said that its soldiers were able to repel a Russian attack, killing four and wounding seven others of the Russian forces amid a new wave of heavy artillery shelling carried out by Russia on the eastern front, which was confirmed by the Ukrainian side, which confirmed that the cities of Chernihiv, Zaporizhya, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, and Mykolaiv were bombed by Russia.

In his evening speech, the Ukrainian president admitted that the situation is getting more difficult, saying, “Russia is pushing more and more soldiers to break our defenses. It has become very difficult at the present time in the cities of Bakhmut, Vaglidar, Liman and other regions,” referring to the cities located on Battle front in eastern Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Black Sea city of Odessa suffers from power outages, affecting hundreds of thousands of residents due to a fire at an earlier war-damaged power substation.

On Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said repair crews were working around the clock to restore Odessa’s power systems.

The outage – although attributed to a fire – is one of many to hit Ukraine’s power grid, after Russia has focused on attacking energy infrastructure since last October as part of its invasion of Ukraine.

“Repair work is going on around the clock. The current situation now is that hundreds of thousands of people in the Odessa region are without electricity,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.

Zelensky said such unrest in Ukrainian cities “would not have happened” before Russian attacks on power generation sites began over several weeks, some of which involved dozens of missiles at once.

Reports said that the authorities were able to recover the bodies of two British volunteers who were killed during the evacuation of civilians from the conflict zone, which happened as part of a prisoner exchange.

And Kyiv confirmed last Saturday that Chris Barry, 28 years old, and Andrew Bigshaw, 47 years old – who were participating in volunteer work in the city of Soldar in the Donetsk region – were killed by a shell that hit their car.

The two bodies were returned to Kyiv as part of a prisoner exchange agreement in which Ukraine recovered 116 of its prisoners, while the Russian side recovered 63 prisoners.

“We managed to recover the bodies of foreign volunteers,” said Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff of the Ukrainian army.

Fears had been mounting for the safety of the two Britons since last January 11, after the commander of the Wagner mercenaries, who helped Russian forces regain control of the city of Soldar, announced that the body of one of them had been found. Prigozhin showed photos online of the passports of Barry and Bigshaw, claiming that his fighters had found them among the dead bodies.

And it was reported last Friday that an American was killed when his car, which he was using to evacuate civilians, was hit by a shell. And the “Global Outreach Doctors” Foundation, with which the man works, confirmed that Peter Reed, 33, is a former soldier in the US Marine Corps, “Marines”, and he also worked as a military medic.

France, Italy and the United States renewed their pledges to send more military aid to Ukraine.

Canada also announced the dispatch of its first batch of German-made Leopard 2 tanks, which consist of four tanks, according to a tweet posted by Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that an agreement reached by Western powers requires Ukraine to commit not to use Western weapons to attack Russian territory.

“There is a consensus on this point,” Schultz told Bild am Sonntag.

Despite this, Kyiv is still pressing for more military aid, especially air fighters.