Russian troops have launched ‘Battle of Donbas’ in eastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy says

Russia has launched a full-scale ground attack on Ukraine's east with blasts reported across the region, officials in Kyiv have said.

A “very
large part of the entire Russian army is now focused on this offensive,"
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address. "No matter how many
Russian troops they send there, we will fight. We will defend ourselves."

For the
last eight years, Moscow-backed rebels have fought Ukrainian soldiers in the
Donbas, a largely Russian-speaking industrial heartland in the east.

Two Donbas provinces targeted