Ukraine’s president paid a visit to the Sumy region in northern Ukraine on Tuesday, continuing his tour of areas of the country that have borne the brunt of Russia’s full-fledged invasion, as the stage appears to be set for a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with officials and residents in two cities in the region, as well as border guards at an undisclosed location near the Russian border.
After the war began more than a year ago, Russian forces occupied a portion of the Sumy region. By early April, the Russians had left the area.
The Associated Press was given exclusive access as Zelenskyy visited Okhtyrka, which saw fierce battles last year but was never occupied, and Trostianets, which was held by Russian forces for a month after the invasion but retaken by Ukrainian forces on March 26, 2022.
According to the president’s office, Zelenskyy also traveled to the Russian border to meet with border guards and learn how they protect checkpoints. According to Ukrainian officials, Russia has increased shelling of border areas in the Sumy region in recent weeks.
Zelenskyy’s trip came after he visited the Kherson and Kharkiv regions, parts of which were retaken from Kremlin forces last year, as well as the hotly contested area near Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region and Zaporizhzhia in the south.
According to Ukraine’s presidential office, the latest Russian attacks involving drones, gliding bombs, and heavy artillery killed at least three civilians and injured 43 others.
Russian shelling hit 12 towns and villages in the eastern Donetsk region, killing two people and injuring 34. The Russian shelling also hit the southern city of Kherson, injuring five people. A Russian strike damaged a school and an apartment building in Bilopillia, Sumy region.
Zelenskyy promised a crowd on a square in Okhtyrka that the battle-scarred city would be rebuilt.
“We will not allow any wound to remain on the body of our state,” he declared.
Zelenskyy honored soldiers in Trostianets at the local railway station, where Ukrainian authorities claim Russians tortured prisoners. He also met with Ukraine’s reconstruction minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov.
Many of the city’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed by the war, with crumbling walls and punctured roofs.
Dmytro Zaiats, a Trostianets resident, told the Associated Press that the president’s visit meant a lot to him.
“It represents unity and the iron will that brought the country together,” he said.
As the weather improves and Western-supplied weapons arrive in Kyiv, expectations of a Ukrainian push against Russian positions rise.
Germany announced late Monday that it had delivered the 18 Leopard II tanks promised to Ukraine. Poland, Canada, Norway, and Portugal have also delivered Leopard tanks as promised. Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s Defense Minister, announced on Twitter that the first British Challenger 2 battle tanks had arrived.
Reznikov stated, “These fantastic machines will soon begin their combat missions.”
Russia is increasing its own production of military equipment. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited factories producing artillery rounds and rockets in the Chelyabinsk and Kirov regions, adding that the plants will increase the output of certain items by seven or eight times later this year.
Russia has continued its long-range bombardment of Ukraine-controlled areas, but its nighttime attacks with Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones have done little damage.
The Ukrainian military shot down 14 of the 15 Shahed drones fired by Russia late Monday, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
According to the Kyiv regional military administration, debris from a downed drone struck an administrative building in the Sviatoshynskyi District in the western part of the capital, causing a fire. There were no injuries.
Serhii Lysak, the regional governor of Dnipropetrovsk, said the Ukrainian military shot down two drones overnight, but another one hit a privately owned industrial facility in Dnipro, causing a fire that took hours to extinguish.
