The main building, lecture halls, university museum and scientific library have been affected, Zelenski said in his video address last night.
This characterizes the Russian invasion with 100 percent accuracy. When it comes to the definition of barbarity, this attack fits the bill perfectly,” said the head of state.
According to Zelensky, the weapons sent by the West are “very powerful” and he praises their accuracy. The Ukrainian army is using the artillery to destroy warehouses and other targets logistically important to Russia, he said. And this significantly reduces the offensive potential of the Russian military. The occupiers’ losses will only increase every week, as will the difficulty of supplying them.”
Nevertheless, after the capture of all major cities in Luhansk province, Russian troops would continue to gain ground in the neighboring Donetsk region. The areas together form the industrial region of Donbas that Vladimir Putin has set his sights on after the failed capture of the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
As the Russian bombing intensifies, the regional governor of Donetsk has urged the remaining 350,000 inhabitants of the province to evacuate.
Russian troops are now about ten miles north of the strategic city of Slovyansk in Donetsk. The British Ministry of Defense expects that this will be a major battlefield in the coming weeks. In the south, the Ukrainian army would take up positions for a major counter-attack on the city of Kherson, which had been taken by the Russian army at the start of the war.
In total, more than 300,000 people are said to have left the Luhansk region since the Russian invasion on February 24. More than 5.6 million individual refugees have been registered across Europe, according to the United Nations. Most have gone to Russia (estimated 1.5 million), Poland (1.2 million), Germany (867,000) and the Czech Republic (388,097). Millions of Ukrainians – the International Organization for Migration has registered more than 8 million – are internally displaced.
