Barcelona“The Donbas will be ours again. We will rebuild every town and every community.” The phrase was pronounced by Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday. Twenty-four hours later, the Ukrainian president, already a major political figure, stood in eastern Ukraine for the first time since the Russian invasion of his country began. The trip has a great symbolic load: for weeks, the Donbas has become the main objective of Moscow and it is where the bloodiest battles of the conflict are now being fought. The cruelty of the Russian troops against this region is bearing fruit and, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pointed out, and they accepted from kyiv, the Kremlin is making “palpable progress”. The future of the war and therefore of Ukraine – and probably of Europe – is at stake these days in Donbas.
Zelensky’s first visit to eastern Ukraine focused on Kharkov, the country’s second largest city and one of the most affected by the war. The president, as he has shown his communication team through Telegram, has visited a few places in the city, which before the invasion had about a million and a half inhabitants. Specifically, he has participated in an act with the military, to whom he has wanted to transfer his “pride without limits”, has observed the destruction both in the urban area and in the surroundings and has held a meeting with local authorities. A few weeks ago, the Ukrainian forces managed to expel the Russian troops from the outskirts of Kharkov, but the municipality still does not breathe easy. The bombardments, in fact, continue to affect the city from time to time. On Thursday a few missiles fell in the center of Kharkov, causing five deaths and ten injuries. Even so, this week the city had regained a part of life with the reopening of more restaurants and shops, and the subway – which has served as a refuge for so many Ukrainians – was working again.
Typical of a war context, Zelensky’s trip has been made without any prior notice and, therefore, without calling the media. Until now, during the 95 days of war, the president had hardly left the capital, kyiv. He had only made a few specific visits to surrounding towns, such as Bucha and Irpin, once they were liberated from Russian occupation. In Kharkiv, he has been seen protected by a camouflage bulletproof vest and his khaki-colored dress, usual since the Russian invasion began. At all times he has been surrounded by armed soldiers and collaborators.
The tone that kyiv has used in recent days to talk about the Donbas is serious. On Saturday night, Zelenski denounced that the situation was “indescribably difficult”. Days before he had described it “from hell” and “nightmare”, and he had assured that the Kremlin troops “commit genocide”. The reality is that the situation is very complicated and the invaders would be very close to completely surrounding one of the key cities in the area, Severodonetsk, the largest in the Luhansk province, with 150,000 inhabitants, which the Russian artillery is turning into a second Mariupol. kyiv, in fact, admits that 90% of the Lugansk province is already in the hands of the Russians and that every day between 50 and 100 soldiers die on the front lines.
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