Kathmandu,

December 7,

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has visited troops in the eastern Donetsk region, which Russia claims as its own after a sham referendum.

Addressing servicemen later in the presidential palace in Kyiv, Zelenskiy said he had spent the day with troops in Donbas, theatre of the heaviest battles, and in Kharkiv region, where Ukrainians have retaken swathes of occupied territory from Russian forces who invaded more than nine months ago.

"Thousands of Ukrainians have given their lives so that the day might come when not a single occupying soldier will remain in our land and when all our people will be free," Zelenskiy, clad in his trademark khaki green, told the gathering.