KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials said Monday that Russia began its long-anticipated assault to seize control of their country’s eastern industrial heartland, launching a ground assault along a nearly 300-mile front while pounding the nation, including the western city of Lviv, with a deadly barrage of missile strikes.
“It can now be stated that Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas, for which they have been preparing for a long time,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address to the Ukrainian people. “We will defend ourselves.”
In a new and potentially pivotal stage of the war focused on Ukraine’s vast rural flatlands, Russian forces attempted to break through Ukrainian defenses along a broad front line in the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said on Ukrainian television.
