(Kyiv) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he traveled to a town in the eastern Donetsk region, near a particularly difficult area of the front, on Wednesday to meet with his troops.
“I started this day in the Donetsk region, with our soldiers, with Commander-in-Chief [Oleksandre] Syrsky and the new commander of the joint forces, General [Andriï] Gnatov,” he announced in a video published on his Telegram channel.
The president is filmed there in front of the sign for the town of Pokrovsk, an area where the Russians have been on the offensive for weeks.
Brigadier General Gnatov is “young, but his knowledge of the front line and his experience are exactly what we need,” Zelensky stressed.
Mr. Gnatov was appointed to the post on Monday, replacing General Yuri Sodol, who was accused of incompetence leading to the deaths of soldiers and setbacks at the front by a popular military commander.
“General Gnatov’s task is obvious: to destroy the occupier and, above all, to save as many lives of our soldiers as possible,” Zelensky argued.
He criticized government officials dealing with these issues for not going to the area for months, promising “a serious conversation” about it in Kyiv and “appropriate conclusions.”
“People need immediate solutions, solutions that are not visible from Kyiv,” Zelensky argued.
“I was surprised to find that some government officials had not been here for six months or more,” he said.
