Zelensky dismisses the military chief of Donbas, the region where the bloodiest fighting takes place

With the fighting centered in Donbas, where the Ukrainian forces are trying to hold the city of Bakhmut with heavy losses, the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, has dismissed the military chief in that eastern part of the country on Monday.

The Ukrainian presidency announced the dismissal of General Eduard Moskaliov, until now commander of the Joint Force in eastern Ukraine, through a brief decree endorsed by Zelensky.

Moskaliov has held that position since his predecessor, Oleksandr Pavliuk, was appointed military chief of the Kiev region in March last year in the days when the Russian army tried to storm the country's capital.

This is not the first dismissal that Zelenski decrees among the high commands of his Army.

Also the Russian president, Vladimir Putin,

Russia's war in Ukraine has become entrenched in Donbas.

The Kremlin has launched a new but incipient offensive on the undulating mining region and seeks to capture the city of Bakhmut to continue swallowing pieces of territory.

Attacking from various foci, Moscow forces are launching artillery groups and assault groups to search for blind and vulnerable spots and also to force Ukrainian troops to use precious ammunition.

Soldiers from Moscow, their recruits and mercenaries from the Wagner Company have carved up small populations inch by inch in recent weeks, but progress is much slower than expected.

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The Ukrainian forces, which have demolished a dam near Bakhmut to try to stop the advance of the Russian troops and are already fighting street to street in some parts of the city, hold on, but the high military commanders and President Zelensky himself have had an impact. in the last days Kiev will defend the so-called “fortress city”, but not at any price.

"It is important for us to defend it, but not at any price and not so that everyone dies," he remarked in an interview with the Italian newspaper

.

Kiev is preparing a counter-offensive in the east and south for the spring (which in the Ukraine officially starts on March 1), but is waiting for the arrival of new Western weapons and, above all, more ammunition.

In the south, in the Zaporizhia region, where Russia has fired S-300 missiles overnight from Sunday to Monday, Ukraine seeks to break the corridor that Moscow has created between the Crimean peninsula (which it already illegally annexed in 2014) and the Donbas region.

Russia has also returned to its tactic of launching swarms of Iranian-made drone bombs.

For the first time since the second year of Russia's large-scale war against Ukraine began, Moscow troops launched up to 14 of these Shahed aircraft on Monday over different regions, including Kiev, causing two deaths. .

Up to 11 were shot down, according to military sources.

The new attack came hours before US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was to visit kyiv to stress that her country will continue to provide economic support to Ukraine to stay afloat.

In the Ukrainian capital, the sirens began to sound before midnight after several days of silence.

Nine of the Shahed model drones managed to reach the kyiv region, where there were no casualties.

Authorities did announce the deaths of two workers at Jemelnitski.

Interior Minister Ihor Klimenko said Ukraine has lost two "heroes" by announcing the deaths of 21-year-old Vladyslav Dvorak and 31-year-old Serhiy Sevruk, members of the National Emergency Service.

Both were participating in the rescue work in one of the places attacked by the drones in that region southwest of Kiev, Klimenko added without giving further details in a condolence message broadcast from the service's Twitter social network account.

The minister has just been ratified in his position a few days ago after occupying his position on an interim basis since his predecessor, Denis Monastirski, died along with 13 other people, some senior ministry officials, when the helicopter crashed in which they were traveling to the outskirts of Kiev on January 18.

The attack with the massive launch of drones has followed the same pattern developed by Russia, especially since, last October, it decided to bomb Ukraine with the aim of eliminating its energy system at the gates of winter.

Since then it has carried out more than a dozen of these types of actions throughout the country, either with drones supplied by Iran or with missiles of all kinds.

Although the frequency of attacks with cruise missiles and drones has decreased this year in cities.

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