Russia presses Donbas offensive as Polish leader visits Kyiv to support Ukraine’s EU aspirations

Kyiv: Russia pressed its offensive in eastern Ukraine on Sunday as Poland’s president travelled to Kyiv to support the country’s European Union aspirations, becoming the first foreign leader to address the Ukrainian parliament since the start of the war.

Lawmakers stood to applaud President Andrzej Duda, who thanked them for the honour of speaking where “the heart of a free, independent and democratic Ukraine beats.” Duda received more applause when he said that to end the conflict, Ukraine did not need to submit to conditions given by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Unfortunately, in Europe there have also been disturbing voices in recent times demanding that Ukraine yield to Putin’s demands,” he said. “I want to say clearly: Only Ukraine has the right to decide about its future. Only Ukraine has the right to decide for itself.”

Duda’s visit, his second to Kyiv since April, came as Russian and Ukrainian forces battled along a 551-kilometre wedge of the country’s eastern industrial heartland.

A man inspects the damage of a destroyed boiler room in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine.Credit:Bernat Armangue

After declaring full control of a sprawling seaside steel plant that was the last defensive holdout in the port city of Mariupol, Russia launched artillery and missile attacks in the region, known as the Donbas, seeking to expand the territory that Moscow-backed separatists have held since 2014.

To bolster its defenses, Ukraine’s parliament voted on Sunday to extend martial law and the mobilisation of armed forces for a third time, until August 23.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has stressed that the 27-member EU should expedite his country’s request to join the bloc as soon as possible due to the invasion. Ukraine’s potential candidacy is set to be discussed at a Brussels summit in late June.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Polish President Andrzej Duda shake hands during a news conference after their meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine.Credit:

France’s European Affairs minister Clement Beaune on Sunday told Radio J it would be a “long time” before Ukraine gains EU membership, estimating it could take up to two decades.

“We have to be honest,” he said. “If you say Ukraine is going to join the EU in six months, or a year or two, you’re lying.”

But Poland is ramping up efforts to win over other EU members who are more hesitant about accepting the war-ravaged country into the bloc. Zelensky said Duda’s visit represented a “historic union” between Ukraine, which declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, and Poland, which ended communist rule two years earlier.

“This is really a historic opportunity not to lose such strong relations, built through blood, through Russian aggression,” Zelensky said. “All this not to lose our state, not to lose our people.”

Poland has welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees and become a gateway for Western humanitarian aid and weapons going into Ukraine. It is also a transit point into Ukraine for some foreign fighters, including from Belarus, who have volunteered to fight the Russian forces.

On the battlefield, Russia appeared to have made slow grinding moves forward in the Donbas in recent days. It intensified efforts to capture Sievierodonetsk, the main city under Ukrainian control in Luhansk province, which together with Donetsk province makes up the Donbas. The Ukrainian military said on Sunday that Russian forces had mounted an unsuccessful attack on Oleksandrivka, a village outside of Sievierodonetsk.

In Enerhodar, a Russian-held city 281 kilometres northwest of Mariupol, an explosion on Sunday injured the Moscow-appointed mayor at his residence, Ukrainian and Russian news agencies reported.

People fleeing from heavy shelling board an evacuation train at Pokrovsk train station, in Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine, on Sunday.Credit:

With Russia claiming to have taken nearly 2,500 Ukrainian fighters from the Mariupol steel plant, concerns grew about their fate and the future facing the remaining residents of the city, now in ruins with more than 20,000 feared dead.

Relatives of the fighters have pleaded for them to be given rights as prisoners of war and eventually returned to Ukraine. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Saturday that Ukraine “will fight for the return” of every one of them.

The complete seizure of the Azovstal steel plant, a symbol of Ukrainian tenacity. gave Putin a badly wanted victory in the war he began nearly three months ago, on Feb. 24.

Denis Pushilin, the pro-Kremlin head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, vowed that the Ukrainian fighters from the plant would face tribunals. He said foreign nationals were among them, although he didn’t provide details.

Ukraine’s government has not commented on Russia’s claim of capturing Azovstal. Ukraine’s military had told the fighters their mission was complete and they could come out. It described their extraction as an evacuation, not a mass surrender.

Mariupol Mayor Vadim Boychenko warned that the city faced a health and sanitation “catastrophe” from mass burials in shallow pits as well as the breakdown of sewage systems. An estimated 100,000 of the 450,000 people who lived in Mariupol before the war remain.

With Russia controlling the city, Ukrainian authorities will likely face delays in documenting any alleged Russian atrocities there, including the bombings of a maternity hospital and a theater where hundreds of civilians had taken cover.

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian court was expected to reach a verdict on Monday for a Russian soldier who was the first to go on trial for an alleged war crime. The 21-year-old sergeant, who has admitted to shooting a Ukrainian man in the head in a village in the northeastern Sumy region, could get life in prison if convicted.

AP

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