What happened in Donetsk and at the front by 11 June 2022?
A look back at the reports from the days before 11 June 2022: a new Moscow-backed premier in Donetsk, a presidential visit to the front and fighting near Bila Krynytsia.
What did the days leading up to 11 June 2022 show about the war's political and military picture? Three reports from that period give a partial answer.
On 8 June 2022, Vitaliy Khotsenko was sworn in as Prime Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, after Alexander Ananchenko stepped down. The change in the self-declared entity's leadership came as fighting continued across the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
That fighting was the setting for a visit by President Zelensky on 5 June 2022. In his evening address, he said he had travelled to troops on the front line on the border of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, including in Lysychansk and Soledar. He said he was proud of everyone he had met, whose hands he had shaken and whom he had supported.
The same day brought a report from a different part of the front. Russian forces advanced on Bila Krynytsia, which Ukrainian forces had recently retaken. Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the military administration, said Russian units had returned to the positions they had previously occupied.
Taken together, these reports show a war in which command changes on the occupation side, a president's visit to the eastern front and shifting control of individual settlements all unfolded within the same week.
