Zelensky visits Ukraine's east, fires Kharkiv security chief

A resident rides his scooter past a roadblock inscribed "Ukraine above all" outside the city of Barvinkove in the eastern Donbas region on May 29, 2022

Residents of small towns like Moshchun, not far from Kyiv, have seen their neighbourhoods largely destroyed

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made his first trip Sunday to the war-torn east since Moscow's invasion started, as Russian forces tightened their grip around key cities in the Donbas region.

After visiting Kharkiv, Zelensky announced that he had fired the northeastern city's security chief in a rare public rebuke.

Although the president did not name the official, Ukrainian media reports identified him as Roman Dudin, the head of the Kharkiv region's SBU security service.

With the war devastating much of his country, the Ukrainian president is set to speak by video link Monday to European Union leaders in Brussels as they seek to break a deadlock on a Russian oil embargo. 

Russia, since failing to capture the capital Kyiv in the early stages of the war and then retreating from the Kharkiv area, has shifted its focus to the eastern Donbas region.

Zelensky has been based in Kyiv since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale attack on Ukraine.  

"But they should have understood long ago that we will defend our land to the last man," he added.

- 'Constant shelling' -

"A Russian shell fell on a residential building, a girl died and four people were hospitalised," he said.

Fighting in the city was advancing street by street, Gaiday said.

In the embattled city, where an estimated 15,000 civilians remain, a local official said "constant shelling" made it increasingly difficult to get in or out.

The water supply is also increasingly unstable, and residents have gone more than two weeks without a mobile phone connection, he added.

Russian forces also targeted a Ukrainian anti-air defence system near Mykolaivka in the Donetsk region, as well as a radar station near Kharkiv and five munitions depots, one close to Severodonetsk.

On his trip to Kharkiv, Zelensky discussed reconstruction plans with local officials, saying there was a chance for areas devastated by Russian attacks to "have a new face".

In Kharkiv itself, customers were returning to the well-known Crystal Cafe in the central public park after it reopened at the end of April.

"We need to keep employment. The city is coming back little by little," the cafe's manager, Alyona Kostrova, 36, told AFP.

Far from the city centre in the neighbourhood of Saltivska, where Russian shells continue to fall, the atmosphere is different.

Volodymyr Svidlo, 82, told AFP he "has no pension", and comes "once a week" to the neighbourhood to sell items, such as onions, dill and flowers from his garden in order to make ends meet. 

When Zelensky speaks to EU leaders at their emergency summit Monday, he will press them "to kill Russian exports" as he seeks to crank up international pressure on Moscow.

The landlocked country is heavily dependent on Russian crude oil supplied via the Druzhba pipeline.

But under a new proposal put to national negotiators on Sunday, the Druzhba pipeline could be excluded from a sanctions package, which would only target oil shipped to the EU by tankers.

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Originally published as Zelensky visits Ukraine's east, fires Kharkiv security chief