War in Ukraine: What’s the situation in Vovchansk? • FRANCE 24 English

War in Ukraine: What’s the situation in Vovchansk? • FRANCE 24 English

um can you tell us anything more about the latest on the front lines well a few days ago the Ukrainian Army was congratulating itself on having pushed the Russians back from the outskirts of V Chans today they’re saying that the area of the town north of the river that divides it is a gray Zone with ongoing battles this attempt by Russia to take V Chans is clearly Ono and a lot of the city center is actually north of the river correspondents who’ve been there and aerial um photography that I’ve seen shows that the city is being really destroyed in much the same way as bmot or SEO donet or other towns that Russia has tried to take using some kind of scorched Earth tactic these glided aerial bombs which do huge amount of damage uh falling on vchan um at a rate of sometimes as many as 20 per day we shouldn’t perhaps exaggerate the importance of it though there were fewer than 20,000 inhabitants in vchan before the full scale Invasion started so it’s not even on the scale of something like BM which was itself not a very big town and chassa similar size to V Chans remains much much more strategically important in terms of the Russians core objective which remains I think to take as a priority the rest of um the part of donet region that it doesn’t yet control and they’re still pushing forward there even as this offensive in the north continues leading people to still really stick to the original assessment that the scope of this attack on the north is not to try to move towards hariv or really take substantial amounts of territory in harv region but more to weaken Ukraine’s defenses further to the South by forcing them to defend towns like vchan and parts of harv region so that they’re you know ever more thinly stretched along the front lines and it looks like the Russians are trying to do something similar in sui region amassing forces On the Border that’s a region to the northwest of harv region still on the border with Russia the speculation that they might mount a crossborder attack there as well but even just amassing forces On the Border obliges Ukraine to have more defensive um units there in Sumi region units that might otherwise be deployed to donet region and GLI um Vladimir zilinski we heard a little earlier his um political mandate officially ended yesterday but so far no plans for new elections well the Constitution says that the term ended yeah today but the Constitution also says that when martial law is en forc in Ukraine no elections can be held and it says that after the end of the president’s term the next president takes office after he’s been duly and fairly elected so legal analysts say that the way to read this is that the constitution clearly states that volodimir zinski must stay in office um until new elections can be held and there is still a very very broad consensus in Ukraine that elections can’t can’t be held while this fullscale war is ongoing so many people are outside the country so many people are on occupied territories there’s so much physical um danger for people’s Security in the idea of organizing elections having people going to polling stations not to mention the huge opportunity it would be for Russia to politically exploit the situation in terms of its information war and so even you know opponents the most sort of vocal political opponents of Vladimir zinski um public aren’t um saying that he should step down um or anything like that but um there are bloggers influencers who it’s believed are in the pay of these political forces who are you know casting doubts over Vladimir zelinsky’s legitimacy and all this is happening at a time when his popularity rating has fallen significantly in Ukraine in 2022 it was soaring above 90% even today um there have been several polls that show that he would actually lose an election um if were to be a presidential election held anytime soon not to P penko who’s officially his closest political opponent the former president but to Valeri zi uh the former top general of the Ukrainian Armed Forces whom uh zalinski fired earlier this year G KAG reporting live there from ke thank you very much

Ukrainian troops still control about 60% of Vovchansk and are fighting house-to-house to defend the border town in northeastern Kharkiv region from Russian attacks, officials said on Monday (May 20). FRANCE 24’s Gulliver Cragg tells us more.
#Ukraine #Russia #war

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