Signs of normal life are returning to Ukraine’s capital, as celebrations for Kyiv Day — the anniversary of the city’s foundation — took place Sunday.
Kyiv Day is usually celebrated on the last Sunday of May, and it became possible this year after Russia retreated from areas around the capital.
Ukrainian soldiers patrol near a front line in the Donetsk region on Sunday.
Ukrainian soldiers patrol near a front line in the Donetsk region on Sunday. (Serhii Nuzhnenko/Reuters)
The “liberation” of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions is Moscow’s “absolute priority,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Sunday, but he denied that the Kremlin planned to annex the two eastern regions, which he described as “sovereign states.”
“Our obvious objective is, of course, to push the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian battalions out of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” he said in an interview with French broadcaster TF1, claiming it would be up to the populations of these and other regions to decide their future.
U.S. officials warned early this month that Moscow could soon annex more Ukrainian territory, beginning with its occupied land in the east and possibly stretching south to Kherson. The planned annexations will include sham referendums, said Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Lavrov also described Western sanctions as “hysterical.” On a geopolitical level, he said, “the main loser in this story is Europe.”
Lavrov’s comments came as fighting continues around the eastern city of Severodonetsk, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that Russia had destroyed all of the “critical infrastructure.”
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