Russia aims to widen east Ukraine battle, claims to have overrun a key rail hub
FirstpostHaving failed to capture Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, early in the war, the Russians set out to seize parts of the eastern industrial region Donbas not already controlled by pro-Moscow separatists Kramatorsk, Ukraine: Russia claimed to have overrun a key rail hub while its troops fought Ukrainian defenders in the streets of another city in eastern Ukraine. In the call with Macron and Scholz, the Kremlin said, Putin emphasized that Russia was working to “establish a peaceful life in Mariupol and other liberated cities in the Donbas.” Ukrainian authorities have reported that Kremlin-installed officials in seized cities have started airing Russian news broadcasts, introduced Russian area codes, imported Russian school curriculum and taken other steps to annex the areas. Russian-held areas of the southern Kherson region have shifted to Moscow time and “will no longer switch to daylight saving time, as is customary in Ukraine,” Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Krill Stremousov, a Russian-installed local official, as saying on 28 May. In his address on 28 May, Zelenskyy also accused Russian forces of preventing Kherson residents from leaving, saying they effectively “try to take people hostage’’ in a “sign of weakness.''