Moscow, 24 Feb. The Russian-imposed interim leader of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, today expressed confidence in a Russian victory despite Western political and military support for Ukraine.
“Today, the Russian army continues to defend the Russian people and liberate the historical territories of Russia (…). And no matter what the West will do to prolong the conflict (…), we we will definitely win,” he said in his speech. Telegram account recalling the start a year ago of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine “to save Donbass”.
It is in the Donbass, in the east of the country, that the bloodiest fighting has been going on for months, especially around Bakhmut, in Donetsk, but also in the direction of Lugansk.
Russia, which already controlled part of Donbass before February 24, 2022, where an armed conflict broke out in 2014, controls after a year of war around 90% of Lugansk and 45% of Donetsk, provinces which it illegally annexed in last September alongside the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia, which it partially occupies.
Russian forces are advancing only slowly, meter by meter, in the Donbass in the face of fierce resistance from Ukrainian troops.
The Russian president, who has remained silent today, said in his state of the nation address on Tuesday that “step by step, with care and consistency, we will accomplish the tasks before us”, suggesting that he will go until the end of the war. ECE
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