Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the embattled eastern city of Avdiivka, his office said Tuesday, after the Kremlin announced that Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin had once again traveled to Ukraine’s occupied areas near the frontline as both leaders sought to demonstrate reinforcement and gather their troops.
The split-screen footage preceded an expected Ukrainian counter-offensive to take back territory seized by Russian forces. The trips also occurred as fighting for the important eastern city of Bakhmut intensified, with Moscow launching airstrikes and simultaneously attacking from different directions, a Ukrainian general said.
Putin visited the southern Kherson region and the eastern Luhansk region, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said. It was the Russian leader’s second trip in a month close to the frontline. Military analysts say Ukraine could attack Kherson and Luhansk in its counter-offensive.
Mr Zelensky announced his visit in a post on social messaging app Telegram on Tuesday. But it was not immediately clear when Mr Putin made his trip, although Mr Peskov and the Kremlin said it was on Monday. The Russian leader appeared in different clothes in two parts of his trip and could be heard in video footage released by Moscow talking to his commanders about the upcoming Easter, which the Orthodox Church celebrated on Sunday.
His remark, which appeared in a video broadcast by Russian state media, was removed from later versions. Mr Peskov said Mr Putin was referring to the Easter season, which lasts several weeks, and stressed that the trip had taken place on Monday.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, denounced Putin’s trip, saying on Twitter it was little more than a “special tour” of an area the Russian leader devastated when he ordered the full-scale invasion of his neighboring country in Ukraine. February 2022.
During his journey to the city of Avdiivka — which Russian troops have been trying to capture for more than a year, leaving it in ruins and forcing almost all residents to flee — Mr. Zelensky sat with the troops and wished them a happy Orthodox Easter, said his office.
The Ukrainian leader made two trips in two consecutive days to the frontline in March, as a show of determination and to thank the soldiers on the frontline. He made an unannounced visit near Bakhmut and that same month visited areas of the Kherson region ravaged by Russia’s campaign to destroy energy infrastructure.
In December, Mr. Zelensky also went to Bakhmut, which has become a powerful symbol of Ukrainian resistance to Moscow’s relentless onslaught.
The two visits this week were announced as fighting has intensified, including in Bakhmut, where Russia’s defense ministry said on Monday its forces had captured two more areas to the south and northwest of the city, though the claim could not be verified. .
“The Bakhmut sector remains the epicenter of the fighting,” the commander of Kiev’s ground forces, General Oleksandr Syrsky, told Telegram on Tuesday.
“Currently, the enemy is increasing the activity of heavy artillery and the number of air strikes, turning the city into rubble,” General Syrsky said. But Ukrainian troops remain in control, he added.
Fighting has also raged in Avdiivka, where Russian attacks have devastated entire neighborhoods and access to humanitarian aid has been nearly cut off for the remaining residents. The city once had 30,000 inhabitants, but many have fled. Ukrainian officials estimate that about 1,800 residents are refusing to evacuate.
After Putin’s trip to Kherson, Russian troops shelled a market in the center of Kherson City, killing one person and wounding at least six others, the head of Mr. Zelensky’s office, Andriy Yermak, wrote on Telegram.
In total, Russian forces had fired 342 shells into the Kherson region in the past 24 hours, Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the regional military administration, wrote on Telegram on Tuesday.
Putin last visited the occupied territories of Ukraine a month ago, traveling to Crimea and the city of Mariupol – a day after an international court issued an arrest warrant against him, accusing him of war crimes.
This time he appeared to have traveled under a shroud of secrecy and without his usual number of staff, which usually included photographers and video operators. The Kremlin has released grainy, shaky video footage of the trip.
Mr Putin took a military helicopter to Kherson, although it was unclear exactly where he was going. Photos and videos released by Russian state media show him emerging from a helicopter that had landed in a rural area on the east side of the Dnipro River.
Putin also visited the Russian military headquarters in Luhansk, the Kremlin said in a statement. The Russian president was not accompanied by his defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, or by the Chief of the Army General Staff, Valery V. Gerasimov, according to footage broadcast by state media.
In the opening speech, Mr Putin told military commanders: “It was important for me to listen to your opinion on the current situation, to share information.”
Russia captured Kherson City, the regional capital, in March last year when its troops advanced north from Crimea and crossed the Dnipro with almost no opposition. It was the only time since Moscow’s full-scale invasion that it had captured a regional capital.
That success lasted only a few months.
Last summer, the Ukrainian government selected the Kherson region for its first major counter-offensive. Armed with military aid from the United States and other allies, it targeted Russian troops and military infrastructure in the province with missiles and engaged in intense battles across the province on both sides of the river.
Moscow had tens of thousands of troops stationed in Kherson City, but with key bridges destroyed or impassable, they were exposed. Before a full-scale battle for the city began, Russian commanders ordered a withdrawal to the eastern bank of the river in November. Ukrainian troops then entered the city of Kherson and recaptured much of the Kharkov region in September.
After withdrawing, Russian forces continue to bomb Kherson City and surrounding areas occupied by Ukraine with a daily barrage of missiles, killing civilians, damaging towns and villages and preventing the resumption of normal life becomes virtually impossible.
Ukrainian officials and military experts say Russia has been building up its forces in the Kherson area, laying mines, increasing troop numbers and building defensive barriers in anticipation of Ukrainian attacks.
Kiev has kept secret the location and timing of any counter-offensive, but a campaign to retake land in the south, if successful, could mean Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, becomes separated from the territory it Russia occupied in the east. Ukraine.
Ukrainian troops have also been pressured to defend part of the western part of Bakhmut as Russian troops have made a steady advance into the city in months of bloody fighting.
“This is where the enemy is concentrating most of its efforts and is determined to take control of the city at any cost,” General Syrsky said.
Russia began its assault on Bakhmut last summer and the battle has resulted in heavy casualties on both sides, although military experts say Russian losses are significantly higher.
If Russian troops conquer all of Bakhmut, it would be their first capture of a major city in months.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace on Tuesday expressed confidence in Ukraine’s planned counter-offensive, but indicated that the war would most likely continue into next year.
“I am optimistic that Ukraine will maintain momentum and strength between this year and next year,” Wallace told reporters in Washington. “I also think we have to be realistic: there won’t be any magic wand moment when Russia collapses.”
Eric Schmitt, Yousur Al-Hlou And Masha Froliak reporting contributed.