both from the president and his advisers and regional politicians, really is changing. there is an understanding or even an acceptance that the towns like severodonetsk and lysychansk, two crucial cities in that part of the donbas, are really coming under pressure. we understand there is intense fighting on the outskirts of severodonetsk and in the last ten minutes, the russian forces have claimed they have taken a crucial village just outside slaviansk that they have been fighting over for a while. so the screws are being tightened on ukrainian forces in the region. we have heard about astonishing levels of aerial bombardment, artillery fire and missiles coming in. that is why president zelensky has used this phrase about trying to make the region uninhabitable, burning it to the ground. he even went further in his address, using the word genocide to describe what is happening in the donbas, to suggest that the russians are not only killing his people,
russia has taken control of half the town the chaplain was looking for ukrainian civilians to evacuate. further down the road we met some. oleksandr was escaping lyman with his family. we were hoping the russians wouldn t enter the town, but then we had to leave the town doesn t exist anymore, he says, before they left to catch a train out of the region russia is interested in lyman a small town for one reason, range. if russian forces take lyman, it puts two ukrainian cities, slaviansk and kramatorsk, within striking distance of russian artillery. walking in artillery is russia s main tactic now it s destructive, simple, and proving effective. so is russia s other tactic, blockade russia s takeover of large parts of southern ukraine and warships in the black sea are cutting off ukraine from selling its main export, grain. and these satellite images ukraine says
and artillery against pro-moscow rebels in ukraine. the rebels made their own statement today about government air power, but it did little to pull the increasing fractions together. senior foreign affairs reports again from the city of donetsk. they took it hard in kiev. a real war is going on in the east of our country, said the acting president. one of our helicopters was shot down by terrorists. it happened in the militant hot bentd of slaviansk. down here in donetsk, an internal war. winning out this day the battali battalion, backing a lot of muscle. as they cleared away barricades outside rebel
towns like slaviansk, and tamron, we are seeing a deepening and the low-grade driven or the security office driven conflict where you are seeing the contract killings, and more lethal beatings, and people using baseball bats, and more abductions as well. this is becoming the new normal and it gives you the idea of how dangerous, and chaotic the situation is in eastern ukraine, and of course, nobody here believes that any sanctions are going to have any effect at all of the policies or the spiraling almost out of control in the eastern ukraine. back to you. thank you, jim maceda. today, the congress recalls from easter recess as both parties are to take on the debate of the minimum wage, and we will talk