Kramatorsk (agencies)
Fierce battles are taking place in eastern Ukraine for control of the Donbass region, as Russian forces threaten the cities of Severodonetsk and its neighbor Lyschansk, after Moscow declared control of the strategic town of Lyman, while the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he visited Ukrainian forces on the front lines in the northeastern region of Kharkiv. In his first official appearance outside Kyiv since the start of the Russian offensive.
“The situation is getting worse in Lyschansk,” said the Ukrainian governor of Luhansk region, Sergey Gaidai. Russian forces are tightening the cordon on the Donbass region, especially around Severodonetsk, where “the Russians launched offensive operations,” according to a report issued yesterday by the Ukrainian Army Chief of Staff.
“The bombing is so intense that it is no longer possible to assess the latest losses and damages, while dozens of buildings have been destroyed in the past few days,” he said, adding: “The situation has escalated sharply.”
Gaidai declared that “Russia is using all its means to control Severodonetsk, or to prevent any contact between the region and Ukraine.”
He acknowledged that “the next week will be very difficult,” but considered that the Russian forces “will not be able to achieve everything they are planning in the near future.”
For his part, the mayor of Severodonetsk, Oleksandr Stryuk, confirmed that “the Russians have come up with many means to storm the city, but they cannot do that so far,” adding: “We believe that the city will resist.” He pointed to the deterioration of the health situation in the city, which had a population of 100,000 people before the military operations.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed in a statement that its forces had destroyed, using long-range and high-precision missiles, an important arsenal of the Ukrainian army in the Dnipro region, southeast of Ukraine.
According to the statement, in the past 24 hours, Russia targeted a Ukrainian air defense system near Mykolaiv, in the Donetsk region, a radar station near Kharkiv and five ammunition depots near Severodonetsk, with missiles of the same type. Russia shifted its main focus to encircling Lysechhansk and Severodonetsk, to tightening its control over Donbass.
Sergei Gaidai had previously stated that “the Russian army is simply destroying Severodonetsk,” noting that it entered the outskirts of the city, where it suffered “heavy losses”, while Ukrainian forces continue their attempts to expel the Russians from a hotel.
This came in response to an official in the police of the pro-Russian separatist “Republic” of Luhansk, who announced in statements carried by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, last Friday, that “the city of Severodonetsk is currently besieged” and the Ukrainian forces are surrounded in it.
Also, the leader of the Russian Republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, announced yesterday evening, on Telegram, that “Severodonetsk is under our complete control … the city has been liberated.” On Sunday, Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian attack on Severodonetsk, the largest Ukrainian-controlled city in the eastern Donbass region, but also faced heavy artillery barrages, officials said.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government has urged the West to provide it with longer-range weapons in order to turn the tide of the military operation now in its fourth month. Zelensky expressed his hope that allied countries would provide him with much needed weapons, and said he expected “good news” in the coming days. Ukraine began receiving Harpoon anti-ship missiles from Denmark and US self-propelled howitzers.
However, Zelensky dismissed the idea of using force to regain all the territory Ukraine lost to Russia since 2014, which also includes Crimea.
“I don’t think we can get all of our lands back by military means, and if we decide to go like this, we will lose hundreds of thousands of people,” he said. Zelensky headed for the first time since the start of the Russian offensive, to the east of the country, where he visited the Kharkiv region, from which Moscow in recent weeks withdrew its forces to redeploy them on other fronts.
In a post accompanying a video of his visit via the Telegram app, Zelensky wrote: “2229 destroyed houses in Kharkiv and in the region… We will restore, we will rebuild, we will restore life, to Kharkiv and all other cities and villages where evil has come.” Several explosions occurred in Kharkiv, hours after Zelensky’s visit. A huge plume of black smoke was visible, after weeks of relative calm.