The top commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Lt. Gen. Valery Zaluzny, announced today that Ukrainian soldiers had withdrawn “to the periphery” of Marinka, a commune in Donetsk that Moscow said yesterday it had taken under its control.
“The fact that we have moved towards the Marinka region and that, in some places, we have already exceeded the community’s boundaries, should not cause a general outcry,” Zaluzny said at a press conference he gave. According to the lieutenant general, Ukrainian soldiers are still in the northern part of this city but “they have prepared a line of defense outside the community” to which they will be deployed. Marinka “doesn’t exist anymore,” he added, because of the extensive destruction it suffered from the fighting.
Russia announced yesterday that it had taken control of this city, which is five kilometers southwest of Donetsk. Marinka had been turned into a stronghold by the Ukrainian military since 2014, when clashes with pro-Russian Donbas separatists began.
Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the capture of Marinka, which he said removes Ukrainian artillery from Donetsk and will allow Russian forces to have a “larger operational space” in the zone.
Zaluzny estimated that Russia “today has the power to concentrate its efforts on the destruction of a city like Bakhmut within three months. I fully understand that our fighters are doing a very difficult job under extremely difficult conditions,” he concluded.
