Vladimir Putin’s forces have turned Ukraine’s day of commemoration for a Soviet-era famine which killed millions into a “day of terror”, president Volodymyr Zelensky has warned.
On the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor, he was joined by other European leaders in Kyiv in warning that hunger “must never again be used as a weapon” – as shells hit civilian homes in central Ukraine, people fled newly-liberated Kherson, and Kyiv continued to reel from Russian attacks on energy infrastructure.
Accusing the Kremlin of reviving the “genocidal” tactics of Josef Stalin, as restrictions on electricity use remained in place across 15 parts of the country, Mr Zelensky said: “Once they wanted to destroy us with hunger, now with darkness and cold. We cannot be broken.”
As analysts suggested that troops were “bogged down” by poor weather conditions, the British Ministry of Defence claimed that Russia was unlikely to muster enough “quality forces” to achieve a breakthrough in a key Donetsk battleground it may be seeking to use as a launching point for a “future major advance north”.
