War in Ukraine, Day 88 | Moscow bombs the East, Zelensky to speak at Davos Forum on Monday

(Kyiv) Nearly three months after the start of its offensive, Russia continued its bombing of eastern Ukraine on Sunday, before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed Monday to the world’s political and economic elites gathered in Davos.

After failing to take control of Kyiv and its region, Russian troops have been concentrating their efforts since March on eastern Ukraine, where fighting is intense.

According to the Ukrainian presidency, Russian bombardments targeted the cities of Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Zaporijjia in the night from Saturday to Sunday.

On Saturday, seven civilians were killed and 10 others injured in the Donetsk region during previous bombings, governor Pavlo Kyrylenko announced on Telegram.

In the Luhansk region, one person was killed and two injured during shelling, its governor Serguiï Gaïdaï said on Telegram. “The Russians are throwing all their efforts to capture Severodonetsk” where the strikes “have been multiplied several times in recent days”, he assured Saturday evening.

“The city is being destroyed, as before they destroyed Rubizhne and Popasna”, he denounced, saying that the Russian forces had destroyed the Pavlograd bridge “which will greatly complicate the evacuation of civilians and deliveries from humanitarian trucks”.

Intensity doubled

The city of Severodonetsk, in the heart of the fighting, was the target of intense bombardment, but the Russians retreated, according to him.

The Ukrainian General Staff noted in its daily morning update on Sunday that the Russian army was continuing “its missile and air strikes throughout the territory”, and had even “increased the intensity by using aviation to destroy infrastructures crucial”.

Russia claimed to have struck a large stockpile of weapons supplied by the West to Ukraine.

“Long-range, high-precision Kalibr missiles, launched from the sea, destroyed a large consignment of arms and military equipment supplied by the United States and European countries, near Malin railway station, in the Zhytomyr region,” according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

It was not possible to verify this information from an independent source.

In his usual video message published on Saturday evening, President Zelensky assured that the military situation had “not changed significantly” on Saturday, but that it “was very difficult”.

According to him, the war “will be bloody” but ultimately it will have to be resolved “via diplomacy”.

Davos by videoconference

“Discussions between Ukraine and Russia will inevitably take place,” he told Ukrainian television ICTV, while talks that were sketched out in Turkey a few weeks ago remained a dead letter.

Polish President Andrzej Duda is visiting Kyiv on Sunday. He is due to deliver a speech in front of the Ukrainian parliament and meet his counterpart, according to the Polish presidency. “He will above all pay tribute to those who, while fighting to defend Ukraine, are fighting to defend Europe,” said his adviser Jakub Kumoch, quoted by the PAP agency.

The Ukrainian leader is also preparing his videoconference address to the Davos Economic Forum in Switzerland, which begins Monday after a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19. He should use this new forum to urge the world to provide Kyiv with more aid, both financial and military.

Mr. Zelensky will be the first head of state to make a speech on Monday. Many Ukrainian politicians will make the trip in person. On the other hand, the Russians were excluded.

For the founder of the Davos Forum, Klaus Schwab, the 2022 edition comes at the most opportune time and [est] most important since the creation of the forum, more than 50 years ago.

“Russia’s Aggression […] will be seen in the history books as the collapse of the order born after the Second World War and the Cold War”, he estimated during a briefing this week, assuring that Davos would do everything possible to support Ukraine and its reconstruction.