Ukrainian flag mounted as Zelenskyy visits reclaimed Izyum – Nexus News
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, has visited Izyum, days after his country’s force reclaimed the city during an ongoing counteroffensive against Russian troops in the northeastern part of the country.
Ukraine stated that it has reclaimed some 8,000 square kilometers (4,970 square miles) of territory in the country since the beginning of the month, most in the country’s northeastern Kharkiv region.
Prosecutors disclosed that they had found six bodies bearing traces of torture in recently reclaimed villages in the region, and announced the formation of investigative teams.
Following Zelenskyy’s arrival to Izyum on Wednesday, the Ukrainian flag was mounted in front of the burned-out city hall building in the largely ruined town.
“The view is very shocking but it is not shocking for me … because we began to see the same pictures from Bucha, from the first deoccupied territories (sic) … So the same destroyed buildings, killed people,” Zeleneskyy informed reporters.
The town of Bucha, close to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, was the region where bodies of civilians, many of them tortured, were found lying helplessly on the streets in March, following the withdrawal of Russian forces.
‘Huge blow’
Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Kharkiv, disclosed that the loss of Izyum was a “huge blow” to Russia.
“Izyum is a logistical hub … and it is from there that Russia was supplying its troops that are further east in the Donbas region … around places like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk,” Abdel-Hamid said.
Read Also: US considers China sanctions to avert Taiwan invasion
“It [Izyum’s capture] is certainly the most significant win for the Ukrainians since their counteroffensive started, and by the same breath is the most significant loss for the Russians,” she added.
However, Russia stated on Wednesday that its forces were hitting back on regions taken back by Ukraine in Kharkiv with “massive strikes”, claiming losses to Ukrainian military servicemen and hardware.
In another report, Russia revealed that it had captured dozens of Ukrainian soldiers in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
The Ukrainian official in charge of the eastern Donetsk region, partially controlled by pro-Moscow separatists since 2014, stated that Russian forces had attacked the entire front-line region during the last 24 hours.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the Donetsk governor, noted that one civilian had been killed and again implored all others to leave, depicting the order as a “matter of life and death”.
The accounts could not be separately verified.
