Live updates: Russia’s war in Ukraine
Amid fierce fighting in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the “situation is complicated along the entire front line.”
In his daily video address, Zelensky said “fierce positional battles continue in some areas, and the situation is especially difficult in Donetsk region. The occupiers’ activity there remains at an extremely high level — dozens of attacks every day.”
He said Russian forces “suffer extremely large-scale losses, but their order has not changed — to reach the administrative borders of Donetsk region. We do not surrender a single centimeter of our land there. And I thank all our heroes who hold positions in Donbas.”
In the southern Kherson region, Zelensky said Ukrainian units were acting “carefully, thoroughly and in the interests of liberating our entire territory. We are strengthening our positions, breaking Russian logistics, consistently destroying the potential of the occupiers to keep the south of our country in occupation.”
Zelensky said work continued to restore normal life in the liberated areas. In two districts of Kharkiv region, he said, “more than a thousand households have their gas and electricity supply restored.”
Across the country, repair work continued on energy facilities, he said.
“As of this evening, about 4 million Ukrainians in 14 regions and the city of Kyiv are cut off from electricity supply. But the majority of them are under stabilization power cut off schedules, not emergency ones.” The schedules implement 12 hours of power cuts a day.
To address the energy crisis, Zelensky said imports of goods necessary during the heating season will be exempt from VAT and import duties. “This should simplify and reduce the cost of supplying generators, batteries, transformers and other similar equipment for energy and heat supply to Ukraine,” he said.
