Russia presses Donbas offensive as Polish leader visits Kyiv

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia pressed its offensive in eastern Ukraine on Sunday as Poland’s president traveled to Kyiv to support the country’s European Union aspirations, becoming the first foreign leader to address the Ukrainian parliament since the start of the war. engaging in a scorched-earth approach.”Haidai said Moscow was concentrating forces and weaponry there to try to win control of Luhansk, bringing in forces from Kharkiv to the northwest, Mariupol to the south, and from inside Russia.The sole working hospital in the city has only three doctors and enough supplies for 10 days, he said.In a general staff morning report, Russia also said it was preparing to resume its offensive toward Slovyansk, a city in Donetsk province that is critical to Russia’s objective of capturing all of eastern Ukraine and saw fierce fighting last month after Moscow’s troops backed away from Kyiv. Ukraine’s Unian news agency said a bomb planted by “local partisans” wounded 48-year-old Andrei Shevchuk, whose home is near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is Europe’s largest and employs many Enerhodar residents.With Russia claiming to have taken prisoner nearly 2,500 Ukrainian fighters from the Mariupol steel plant, concerns grew about their fate and the future facing the remaining residents of the city, now in ruins with more than 20,000 feared dead.Relatives of the fighters have pleaded for them to be given rights as prisoners of war and eventually returned to Ukraine.