The Ukrainian military stiffened defenses Sunday against Russian assaults in the east and south as civilians continued to flee the country in vast numbers and the nation’s president framed the war as an existential threat to all of European democracy.
“The whole European project is a target for Russia,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address, labeling the conflict raging in Ukraine a “catastrophe” that will “inevitably” spread elsewhere in Europe. “Russian aggression was not intended to be limited to Ukraine alone, to the destruction of our freedom and our lives alone,” he said.
The Ukrainian military said it was resisting Russian efforts in the east to break through from the city of Izyum, which Russian forces have seized as a strategic foothold to take more territory. Ukraine said it was continuing to fight off Russian attacks in the southeastern port city of Mariupol, much of which has been destroyed in weeks of street fighting and shelling. It also reported a missile strike on an airport in the city of Dnipro in which five emergency workers were wounded.
Since troops retreated from Kyiv this month after failing to take the capital and becoming bogged down in the northern reaches of the city, Ukraine has been bracing for new Russian advances in the south and in the eastern region of Donbas, home to a pair of breakaway, pro-Russia republics where fighting has been ongoing since 2014.
Satellite images released Sunday by Maxar Technologies show what appears to be an 8-mile-long convoy of Russian military vehicles heading south toward Izyum, a gateway to the Donbas.. In another apparent switch in strategy, Russia has appointed a new commander to oversee its invasion of Ukraine, according to U.S. officials. National security advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN that Russia’s new wartime leader, Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, helped lead attacks on civilians while he was in charge of Russian troops in Syria’s bloody civil conflict.
