President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visited the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, touring areas affected by Russia’s full-scale invasion and its monthslong campaign to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, he said on Thursday.
“We have to ensure full restoration and protection of our energy sector!” Mr. Zelensky said in a post on Telegram, the social messaging app. “I am grateful to everyone who works for this and returns the light to our people!”
The visit was Mr. Zelensky’s second to a frontline area in two days. On Wednesday, he made a defiant trip to the area around the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, which has become a potent symbol of Ukrainian resistance as Kyiv’s forces battle to hold off a relentless Russian onslaught.
Mr. Zelensky’s travels to regions partly occupied by Russia come as Western allies ramp up supplies of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, which is preparing for an anticipated counteroffensive that could include a push to retake captured territory.
Though Ukraine recaptured the city of Kherson, the regional capital, from Russian forces last November in one of its most significant victories of the yearlong war, Moscow still controls territory in the wider Kherson province. Russian forces have used positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River to shell the city of Kherson on the opposite side of the waterway, preventing Kyiv from being able to restore a sense of normality in the city.
On Thursday, Ukraine’s Armed Forces said they were escalating artillery strikes against Russian positions east of the Dnipro. “We are working to make the enemy feel our presence, our pressure,” Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s southern command, said on national television.
Russia has sought to toughen its defenses, and there was no immediate indication that shelling of the city of Kherson had lessened. Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed governor of Kherson, said on Russian television this week that Moscow’s forces had “strengthened by a factor of three the line of defense” on the eastern side of the river.
Over the winter months, parts of the Kherson region endured weeks without access to electricity and water, as Russian forces rained missiles, rockets and drones down on energy infrastructure targets in an apparent bid to freeze residents.
During the trip on Thursday, Mr. Zelensky said he visited Posad-Pokrovske, a farming village that was largely destroyed during the fight for the city of Kherson, which is about 20 miles away. “Currently, the restoration of electricity and water supply is underway here, the medical clinic is being rebuilt, and people are returning,” Mr. Zelensky said on Telegram.
His visits near the frontline have come days after Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, visited the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, now occupied by Russian forces after one of Moscow’s most brutal campaigns of the war.
Mr. Putin’s trip to Mariupol, about 50 miles southeast of the Ukrainian-controlled town of Vuhledar — where Russian forces sustained heavy losses just weeks ago and where fighting continues — is believed to be the closest the Russian leader has come to the front line since his forces’ invasion last year.
