Zelensky announces the start of the Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine and "No plans" for Biden to visit Kyiv

Ukraine announced, on Monday, that Russian forces began their offensive in the eastern Donbass region.

While the battles continued in the besieged port city of Mariupol (southeast), the White House said that there are no plans for President Joe Biden to visit the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

The White House announced that Biden does not intend to visit Kyiv, despite the "urging" of his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky for him to visit the besieged capital and show more US support for Ukraine.

"The president has no plans to go there, let me just repeat that," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.

On the other hand, a US official told Agence France-Presse that Biden held a meeting with US allies on Tuesday to discuss developments in the situation in Ukraine, adding that the meeting was "part of our regular coordination with allies and partners to support Ukraine," without specifying who will participate in this meeting via video.

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Monday evening that the Russian forces had begun the Battle of Donbass, which they had been preparing for a long time.

Zelensky said that the Russian army is concentrating a large part of its forces in the attack on eastern Ukraine, stressing that the Ukrainians are ready to defend their country.

The head of the Ukrainian President's office also confirmed that the second phase of the war had begun, calling for confidence in the Ukrainian armed forces.

A little earlier, the Ukrainian National Security Council confirmed that the active phase of the Russian offensive in the east of the country began along the front line.

And the Ukrainian General Staff had said - in a statement - that the Russian army had completed assembling its forces to launch an attack on the east of the country, noting that it was intensifying its attacks in the Donetsk and Slobozansky regions of the Donbass region.

She added that Russia's main military power is focused on controlling the entire Donetsk and Lugansk regions in the Donbass.

The situation in Kharkiv

To the north on the Donbass border, the Ukrainian General Staff reported that the Russian army was partially besieging the city of Kharkiv and destroying its residential areas with artillery fire.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that they believe that the Russians are still preparing the conditions for the next offensive operation in the Donbass region.

Kirby added that the Russians are now concentrating their capabilities in a smaller geographic area in the Donbass and the south.

He added that the Russian forces have incurred human losses and lost heavy and light military equipment, and are trying to overcome some logistical obstacles and support their internal lines, noting that the Russians have tried to recruit fighters from Syria.

Earlier on Monday, a senior US military official confirmed that Russia had sent reinforcements to eastern Ukraine to renew its offensive operations.

The US official indicated that there are about 76 Russian tactical battalions in southern and eastern Ukraine currently, an increase of about 11 battalions in recent days.

The news of the start of a new Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine after the withdrawal of forces from the vicinity of Kyiv and other areas in the north of the country came in parallel with the continuation of battles in the city of Mariupol and in other axes around the cities of Kharkiv and Kherson, not far from the Donbass region.

A Ukrainian woman cries for her father, who was killed in a Russian bombing of the city of Kharkiv (Reuters)

weapons shipments

In a new development in Russia's war on Ukraine for the 54th day, the Russian Defense Ministry spoke on Monday about the destruction of a logistics center in the city of Lviv (west) and large shipments of Western weapons that arrived last week.

The ministry said that Russian missiles destroyed a logistics center in the city of Lviv containing weapons that arrived in Ukraine from Europe and the United States.

However, US Defense Department spokesman John Kirby said there were no indications that the Russians were targeting or destroying Western aid to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian authorities had announced the killing of 7 people in a Russian missile attack on the city of Lviv, also referring to the bombing of the town of Vasylkiv (southwest of the capital, Kyiv).

It also confirmed that 13 people were killed in a similar bombing of residential areas in the Kharkiv Governorate (east).

intense blows

Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry said that its forces launched intensive strikes on the Ukrainian army, and on targets belonging to it, using air forces, artillery and air defense systems.

The ministry spoke of the destruction of 16 Ukrainian military facilities, including 5 command posts and 3 ammunition depots. The strikes hit the regions of Kharkiv, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk, and in the southern coastal city of Mykolaiv.

The Russian Defense Ministry also said that its forces bombed two Ukrainian fighters and a Su-25 attack aircraft, downed more than 10 marches, and destroyed 4 warehouses of weapons and military equipment with missile strikes in Popasnia, Yampol and Kramatorsk in the Donbass region.

On the other hand, the Ukrainian forces confirmed that their air defenses had shot down a Russian combat aircraft, a drone, and 3 helicopters during the past 24 hours.

In the midst of the continuous shelling and battles on several fronts, the Ukrainian News Agency said that the commander of the 49th Air Defense Division in the Russian army, Colonel Ivan Gration, was killed during the ongoing battles in Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces training

Meanwhile, a Pentagon spokesman announced Monday that his country will begin training some divisions of Ukrainian forces outside Ukraine.

Kirby said that the process of training Ukrainians to use artillery "howitzers" could begin within days.

Washington decided to supply the Ukrainian army for the first time with a new generation of howitzers of the M777 models.

Simultaneously, a senior Pentagon official said on Monday that the first shipments of the new batch of US military aid to Ukraine had arrived at the country's borders for delivery to the Ukrainian army.

Mariupol mode

In the coastal city of Mariupol, the Ukrainian General Staff stated that the battles are still continuing, noting that the Russian forces are trying to storm the city's sea port.

Moscow had said that its forces, backed by separatists loyal to it, had taken control of most of the city of Mariupol, noting that the fighting was confined to the industrial area where Ukrainian forces are holed up.

For his part, a senior US defense official said Monday that the coastal Mariupol is still a dispute between Ukrainian and Russian forces.

While Mariupol Mayor Vadim Boychenko confirmed that more than 100,000 people are still trapped in the city, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshukin appealed to Russia's political and military leadership to open a humanitarian corridor from Mariupol to Berdyansk.

The city's mayor's advisor, Petro Andryushenko, said that the fighting in the area of ​​the left bank of the Kalimos River continued throughout the day, and that the Russians continued to bombard the Azovstal factory (east of the city) with all kinds of weapons.

Concerning the humanitarian situation, Andryushenko said that the number of civilian deaths amounted to about 22,000, and it may witness an increase, especially since the city has no doctors left, which worsens the humanitarian situation.

In New York, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths said that he had not yet received any response from the Russians regarding his proposals to evacuate citizens from Mariupol, suggesting that a humanitarian truce could be reached within two weeks.

In turn, the British Ministry of Defense said that Russian leaders will be concerned about the time taken to control the city of Mariupol, adding that the coordinated Ukrainian resistance has tested Russian forces hard, diverting the path of soldiers and mechanisms, which has slowed the Russian advance elsewhere.

The Azov battalion of the Ukrainian army posted on Twitter pictures of an attack carried out by soldiers from the battalion against Russian soldiers in the city of Mariupol, without mentioning the date of this attack.

Also in Mariupol, Donetsk separatist forces said that they had killed and wounded about 150 Ukrainian soldiers in artillery shelling targeting a convoy of Ukrainian forces, which was heading from the seaport to the Azov Staal plant.