Russia now occupies one-fifth of Ukraine: Zelensky

Russian forces now occupy one-fifth of his country’s territory, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says, offering a startling perspective on how the biggest international conflict in Europe since World War II has sundered a nation on the borders of the European Union and NATO.

“If you look at the entire front line, and it is, of course, not straight, this line is more than a thousand kilometres,” Zelensky said in a video address to the parliament of Luxembourg on Thursday. “Just imagine! Constant fighting, which stretched along the front line for more than a thousand kilometres.”

He said the Ukrainian territory now controlled by the Kremlin was comparable to the area of the Netherlands.

A destroyed building on June 2 in Trostyanets, eastern Ukraine. Russian forces occupied large swaths of the Sumy region after Moscow invaded Ukraine before Ukrainian forces retook control of the area in April.Credit:Getty

Russian forces have withdrawn from around the capital, Kyiv, in the north of the country after failing to capture it early in the conflict. But Zelensky said fighting was raging along a long crescent-shaped front, from around the north-eastern city of Kharkiv to the outskirts of the city of Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea, in the south.

In 2014, Moscow seized the Crimea region in the south, where its Black Sea fleet is based, and Russia-backed separatists took over parts of the Donbas region, which borders Russia to the east.

Russia made its swiftest and largest gains in the first weeks of the war, capturing land in the south, east and around Kharkiv. Its most significant single gain was the southern port city of Mariupol, which it wrested from Ukrainian control in May after months of fighting and artillery attacks that killed thousands and left the city in ruins.

Emergency crews search the site of a bombing in the school where a graduation ceremony, called the Last School Bell, was supposed to take place in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Thursday.Credit:AP

Zelensky said Russian troops have occupied a total of 3620 population settlements, which includes cities, towns and villages, but, in a sign of the war’s shifting dynamics, he said Ukraine has “liberated” 1017 of those places.

Ukrainian forces struggled to hold on to territory along the war’s eastern front, even as officials said its forces were making progress in limited counterattacks in the south, trying to take advantage of Moscow’s decision to concentrate its campaign — and its forces — in the Donbas region in the east.

Amid the intense fighting and heavy losses being suffered by both the Russian and Ukrainian armies, the arrival of ever more sophisticated and powerful Western weapons from the United States and Germany, among others, could soon alter the dynamic on the battlefield.

A woman and a boy with a bike walk by destroyed buildings in Trostyanets, Ukraine, on Thursday.Credit:Getty

For now, Moscow’s main military effort is being directed at the capture of Sievierodonetsk, the last major city in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine that is not in Russian hands. Using their advantage in artillery power, Russian forces have pounded targets in the area for weeks and have now gained control over more than 70 per cent of the city.

Ukrainian troops pushed Russian soldiers back several blocks in street battles, a regional official said Thursday

Zelensky said about 14,000 Ukrainian civilians and service members have been killed in the war. At least 1.5 million people have fled their homes to elsewhere in the country and about 5 million have fled abroad as refugees.

The United Nations estimated last week that about 4000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine. Russia has not released casualty figures since late March, when it said 1351 soldiers had died, but Zelensky said Ukrainian officials believe at least 30,000 Russian troops have been killed.

In his nightly address to the nation, Zelensky said more than 200,000 children had been deported to Russia since the invasion began. He called the deportations “one of Russia’s most heinous war crimes”.

“These are orphans from orphanages. Children with parents. Children separated from their families,” Zelensky said. “The Russian state disperses these people on its territory, settles our citizens, in particular, in remote regions. The purpose of this criminal policy is not just to steal people but to make deportees forget about Ukraine and not be able to return.”

Russia has denied that people are being forced to leave Ukraine, saying that the 1.5 million Ukrainians now in Russia were evacuated for their own safety. The Russian Defence Ministry said 18,886 people were evacuated from eastern Ukraine, including 2663 children, on Wednesday alone.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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