Ukrainian President pledges to fight “as long as possible” for the strategic city of Bakhmut

President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to defend the city of Bakhmut “as long as possible”, while welcoming the heads of the European Union to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, on Friday.

Almost a year after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Bakhmut has become the epicenter of the fighting and Moscow’s forces have made small territorial gains in the region in recent weeks at the cost of heavy losses.

“Start to end the occupation of Donbass”

“Nobody will abandon Bakhmut… We will fight as long as we can,” Zelenskyy said after a summit with senior European officials. He called the city a “fortress”.

“If (Western) arms deliveries to Kyiv accelerate, especially long-range weapons, not only will we not withdraw from Bakhmut, (but) we will start to end the occupation of Donbass” , an eastern region partly under Russian control, he added. .

Authorities say there are about 6,500 people left in the town, which had some 70,000 before the war.

On Thursday, one person was killed and seven others injured in the attack on a vehicle carrying volunteer rescuers, according to local authorities.

Oleksander Tkatchenko, 65, said he and other neighbors rushed to pull a woman from the wreckage of the vehicle. It was “clearly not a military target because the car was red”, he said.

Shelling also continued in Kherson, a major southern city captured and then abandoned by the Russians, where one person was killed and one injured on Friday, authorities said.

For more, watch the Euronews report in the video above.