Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a working trip to the southern city of Mykolaiv that “Ukraine will definitely win” while relentless fighting continued in the east of the country.
The president handed out medals and posed for selfies with the soldiers in what appeared to be an underground bunker, according to a video posted to his official Telegram account.
“Our brave men. Each of them is working flat out,” he said. “We’ll definitely keep going! We will definitely win.”
Russian forces reached the outskirts of Mykolaiv in early March but were then pushed back to the eastern and southern edges of the region, where heavy fighting continues.
“The President inspected the building of the Mykolayiv Regional State Administration, which was destroyed as a result of a missile attack by Russian forces,” Zelenskyy’s office said.
A Russian missile blasted a hole through the building in late March, killing 37 people.
Ukraine has been slow in advancing on its goal of liberating Kherson, one of Ukraine’s most strategic Black Sea cities, located less than 70 miles from Mykolaiv.
Sign up for First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am BST
On Saturday morning, Ukrainian media reported that a car explosion in Kherson injured the prison warden in an attack apparently carried out by Ukrainian partisans operating on occupied Russian territory.
Partisan warfare in Ukraine has increased, especially in the south of the country around Kherson.
During his late-night national address on Friday, Zelenskyi announced that the famous paramedic nicknamed “Taira,” Yuliia Paievska, whose footage was smuggled out of the besieged city of Mariupol by an Associated Press team, was released three months after she was kidnapped by Russian forces was caught there.
“I am grateful to everyone who worked towards this result. Taira is already at home. We will continue to work to free everyone,” he said.
Paievska transmitted the clips to two Associated Press journalists, who were the last international reporters in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol. One of the two journalists managed to escape by hiding the clips in a tampon on March 15. Paievska was taken hostage the next day.
In its latest intelligence briefing, the UK MoD said Russia has likely renewed its advance in eastern Ukraine, with intentions of penetrating deeper into the Donetsk region and encircling the pocket around the embattled city of Sievierodonetsk from the north.
Russia aims to fully seize Sievierodonetsk, a key city in its quest for complete control of the eastern Luhansk region.
More than 500 civilians, including 40 children, are believed to be trapped at the Azot factory in the city. Weeks of Russian bombing of Sievierodonetsk, including its industrial area, has reduced much of the city to rubble.
The shelling of the Azot plant is reminiscent of the earlier bloody siege of the Azovstal Steelworks in the southern port of Mariupol, where hundreds of militants and civilians took refuge from Russian shelling.
Britain also warned on Saturday that Russia is likely to claim justification for making less distinction between civilian and Ukrainian military targets in the region if civilians in Sievarodonetsk did not accept Russia’s offer to evacuate via existing corridors. Moscow has previously accused Ukraine of disrupting plans to open a humanitarian corridor for civilians to exit the area.
The evacuation was to bring civilians from the Azot plant to Svatove, a town north of Sievierodonetsk controlled by pro-Russian forces.
Russian shelling overnight also damaged a municipal building and sparked a fire at an apartment block in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, the regional governor said.
Peace negotiations between the two countries have largely stalled as fighting turned into a grueling war of attrition, with both sides suggesting a return to talks could be difficult.
On Saturday, the head of Ukraine’s negotiating team, David Arakhamia, said talks with Russia could resume in late August after Kyiv launched “a series of counter-offensives”.
Commenting on Arakhamia’s remarks, Dmitry Medvedev, head of the Russian Security Council and former president, wrote on his Telegram page that by August “the question will be whether we will have someone to talk to,” in the recent series of remarks by senior Russian officials who questioned Ukraine’s statehood.