Free Republic

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched its long-feared, full-scale offensive to take control of Ukraine's east, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Monday. “Now we can already state that the Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas, for which they have been preparing for a long time," he said in a video address. Zelenskyy said a "significant part of the entire Russian army is now concentrated on this offensive.” The Donbas is Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial heartland in the east, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for the past eight years and have declared two independent republics...

Russians had large scale movement of troops within Ukraine for two weeks, away from Kiev and Chernigov, in preparation for a big attack in the east that seems to have just began.

"We can now say that Russian forces have started the battle of the Donbas, for which they have long prepared," he said in a video address. Ukraine's presidential chief of staff said that "the second phase of the war has started," referring to Russia's new assault... "This morning, along almost the entire front line of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, the occupiers attempted to break through our defences," Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said in televised comments. "They began their attempt to start the active phase this morning," he said.