War: Russia’s ‘Big Revenge’ Has Begun’ — Zelensky

• Zelensky declared that Russia has begun ‘big revenge’ on Ukraine.

• Zelensky has warned for weeks that Moscow sought to step up assaults after months of virtual stalemate.

• The Ukrainian President said Russian attacks in the east were relentless despite heavy casualties on the Russian side.

EKO HOT BLOG reports that Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky has warned for weeks that Moscow sought to step up assaults after months of virtual stalemate.

Russia has begun its “big revenge” for Ukraine’s resistance to its invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, as Russian forces claimed a series of incremental gains in his country’s east.

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Zelensky has been warning for weeks that Moscow aims to step up its assault on Ukraine after about two months of virtual stalemate along the front line that stretches across the south and east.

While there was no sign of a broader new offensive on Monday, the administrator of Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, Denis Pushilin, said Russian troops had secured a foothold in Vuhledar, a coal mining town whose ruins have been a Ukrainian bastion since the outset of the war.

Pushilin’s adviser, Yan Gagin, said fighters from Russian mercenary force Wagner had taken partial control of a supply road leading to Bakhmut, a city that has been the focus of a Russian offensive for months.

The head of Russia’s Wagner group said his fighters had secured Blahodatne, a village just north of Bakhmut.

Kyiv said it had repelled assaults on Blahodatne and Vuhledar.

Zelensky said Russian attacks in the east were relentless despite heavy casualties on the Russian side, casting them as payback for Ukraine’s success in pushing Russian forces back from the capital, northeast and south earlier in the conflict.

“I think that Russia really wants its big revenge. I think they have [already] started it,” Zelensky said.

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“Every day they either bring in more of their regular troops, or we see an increase in the number of Wagnerites,” he told reporters in Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa.

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