Ukraine’s Zelensky ‘relatively close’ to explosions during trip to front, spokesman says
- Ukraine’s president visited one of the main hotspots of the war’s southern front
- At least 28 people died when shelling hit a bakery in Russian-occupied Ukraine
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday said he had visited troops at southern frontline village Robotyne, which Kyiv retook from Russian forces last summer but is again under heavy attack.
Kyiv recaptured the small village in the southern Zaporizhzhia region in August last year in what it hailed as a major success in the counteroffensive against Russian forces.
Robotyne has since been relentlessly attacked by Russian troops and is one of the main hotspots on the southern front.
“Zaporizhzhia region. Robotyne. The location of the 65th Mechanised Brigade. I spoke with the defenders, thanked them and presented state awards,” Zelensky said on social media. “It is an honour to be here today.”
Video posted on Facebook showed the president in uniform meeting soldiers in a dark room that looked like an underground cellar.
“I have the great honour to be here today, to reward you, because you have such a difficult and decisive mission on your shoulders to repel the enemy and win this war,” Zelensky told fighters.
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“I wish you victory, I want to reward you and I wish you to do everything to achieve this victory sooner,” he said.
Later Sunday, his spokesman said Zelensky had been “relatively close” to explosions during his trip.
“This is Robotyne, and there are active hostilities there, so there were relatively close explosions,” Sergiy Nykyforov said. “But I would not dramatise the situation.”
The 65th brigade led the assault on the village last year.
While the recapture of Robotyne was hailed as a success of Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Ukraine’s bid to claw back territory lost to Moscow has since slowed.
Meanwhile, the death toll from a Ukrainian strike on a bakery in the occupied eastern city of Lysychansk has climbed to 28 people, including one child, Russia said on Sunday.
Moscow’s occupation forces Saturday said Ukrainian forces had struck a building that housed a bakery popular with locals on weekends.
Kyiv has not yet commented on the strike.
Lysychansk is in the occupied Lugansk region that fell to Russian forces after one of the most brutal battles during Moscow’s long offensive in summer 2022.
Before the Russian army entered Ukraine, the city had a population of around 110,000 people.
“Search operations continue on the site of the collapsed bakery … 28 people, including a child, have died,” the Russian emergency situations ministry posted on Telegram.
Officials in Lugansk said there were 18 men, nine women and one child among the dead. They did not give the child’s age.
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Russia released images of an almost completely destroyed building, with rescuers combing the rubble in the dark, where they found a corpse and a wounded woman who was evacuated on a stretcher.
The one-storey building had a large sign on it that read “Restaurant Adriatic”.
Russia alleged Saturday that Ukraine had used Western weapons in the strike and said it expected swift and “unconditional condemnation” from the international community.
On Saturday, the Ukrainian army’s daily report said aviation “struck 12 areas where enemy personnel were concentrated”.
It also said its forces “struck one area of enemy concentration”.
Rescuers have so far saved 10 people from the wreckage, according to the Russian emergency ministry.
The Russian-installed health minister of the occupational Lugansk government, Natalia Pashchenko, said they were brought to medical facilities in the main city of Lugansk.
She said four of them are in “the most critical state” while two others are in a “severe state”.
The city of Lugansk has been under pro-Russian separatist control since 2014.
