Page 20 - Donbas Area News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Looking at. the donbas area was traditionally, before the actual war broke out, is what putin had in his sights. the area has been under constant fighting since 2014. it was a self—declared republic, but effectively a war zone where separatist ukrainian forces which are backed by russia and battle the ukrainian forces. this is assumed to have been the end game before the war broke out. an annexation, similar to crimea but a lot more bloody and well, a lot less to parts of ukraine, it is a chunk of the mainland. the intelligence chief he

Now you take a look at the donbas area. they've been in the donbas for seven, eight years now fighting down in that location, either with russian proxies or russians themselves. if they make that switch there, they will attempt to link mariupol with odesa all on through maldova. if they get that, then they have established that land bridge for crimea and they could hold there and call success until we just have to continue to watch that. that is a course of action. my view is they're not having success up in kyiv. they're going to continue to push that for a while. i still think they want to t...

>> reporter: the unlikely safe haven is precarious. russian troops are positioned nearly half an hour's drive away from here. ivan watson, zaporizhzhia, ukraine. all right. welcoming our guest here in lviv, a volunteer and director of the ukrainian education platform. you've been working since 2014 in the donbas area, correct, rebuilding homes? tell us about the organization. >> first of all, the ukrainian education platform has been working for 20 years. i joined literally a month ago when the war started. i have businesses in kyiv with my wife so -- but in 2014 when the war started the ukr...

And the impetus was to rescue those people from their oppressors, vladimir putin's angle. >> john: we saw the pictures yesterday of them sinking the ship, limits russia's ability to get supplies into the area. over here in odesa, they would love to have that, hidden by the box here, but pushing the forces back in mykolaiv, a long way to get back up into the theater. >> you hear more dialogue now that the russians are more interested in the separatist region. if they don't have the resources

Part of the country near the contested donbas area, russia is strengthening the stronghold on mariupol, the president says 90% of the buildings have been completely destroyed and the mayor is urging all of the 160,000 residents to evacuate as soon as possible saying more than 5,000 people have been killed since russia's invasion and about 200 of them are children. battles to hold on territory is decimating towns in the crossfire. further west in the southern part of the country, along the black sea, russia is targeting mykolaiv. a missile blasted a hole in the nine-story government building, k...