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Ukrainian firefighters try to extinguish a fire at a factory bombed by Russia in the Donetsk region.
Russia is gaining ground in eastern Ukraine, where local troops are being forced to withdraw on several fronts.
Russian military forces exceed Ukraine in numbers and firepowerwith relentless heavy artillery bombardment causing lethal effects in a much more confined area compared to the first phase of the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assured that Russia is burning cities to ashes and the deaths of Ukrainian civilians are increasing.
His adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, denounced on Wednesday that the Russian army is using in Ukraine “the most non-nuclear weapons potent” that exist, such as long-range mobile rocket launcher systems capable of carrying thermobaric warheads.
Ukraine calls for superior weapons
Podolyak called on his Western allies to provide Ukraine with MLRS long-range rocket launchers, suggesting that they have so far not done so for fear of an escalation in the conflict.
The M270 MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System or Multiple Launch Rocket System) is a launcher for guided and unguided projectiles and missiles with a range of hundreds of kilometers
image source, Getty Images
United States Army MLRS Multiple Launch Rocket System.
These devices would allow Ukrainians more easily attack targets inside Russiasuch as barracks, air defenses, fuel depots or artillery, something that many abroad view with concern.
US media say that the Joe Biden government plans to send this type of weaponry to Ukraine, more powerful than the one it has provided so far.
BBC Defense Correspondent Jonathan Beale points out that the delay in the delivery of weapons from the West to Ukraine and the time it takes to train Ukrainian forces to use them are factors that “could make a difference”.
Meanwhile, he says, Russia still has much larger reserves of artillery ammunition.
And he assures that a senior official of a NATO country described as “criminal” that the West has a more limited stock of these weapons.
About to lose Luhansk
In any case, at the moment Ukraine is losing ground and Russia is advancing, above all in the Donbas region, in the east of the country.
The evolution of the Donbas offensive.
There, Moscow not only controls the part of the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which were already under pro-Russian control before the war, but pushes beyond its borders.
The Russian army already controls 95% of the Luhansk province, the easternmost administrative division of Ukraine, as confirmed by both Ukrainian military authorities and pro-Russian militias.
In their attempt to take over this region completely, Putin’s troops are trying to surround the cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, considered the last Ukrainian stronghold of Luhansk.
In Severodonetsk, most of its 100,000 inhabitants have been evacuated and Russian forces have taken two-thirds of its perimeter, according to local authorities.
The head of the Severodonetsk district administration, Roman Vlasenko, said that Putin’s soldiers are trying to take the city center from three different fronts, but the locals have repulsed them twice.
image source, Getty Images
The outskirts of Severodonetsk (Luhansk) after a Russian attack.
He told the BBC that Ukrainian forces need more weapons heavy to repel Russian attacks.
He assured that the Russian troops do not have a special numerical advantage there, but they have heavier weapons.
Vlasenko explained that weapons are arriving at the front in many areas, but “for the counteroffensive to be quick and effective, we need more.”
El gobernador de Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, mentioned the possibility of withdrawing from the little territory they have left in the region to avoid being surrounded by the Russian army.
Four maps of the evolution of the war.
Russian advances in Donetsk
Meanwhile, in the neighboring province of Donetsk, Russia has made significant progress since its invasion on February 24.
Moscow troops and pro-Russian militias took over Liman, in the north of this region, according to various reports.
Limán is a small city, with less than 30,000 inhabitants, but is of great strategic importance.
It is an important road junction less than 30 kilometers from Sloviansk, a town of more than 100,000 inhabitants that is the main railway hub in the region.
image source, Getty Images
Two men remove rubble from their apartment hit by Russian artillery in Kramatorsk, Donetsk.
The Russian “Frankenstein Forces”
Russian forces have suffered significant losses since the invasion began.
The UK Ministry of Defense estimates that in the first three months of its operation in Ukraine, Russia has suffered a death toll similar to that of the Soviet Union in nine years of war in Afghanistan.
It has also lost significant amounts of weaponry.
As a result, Moscow has sought to combine some of its decimated units, forming what some analysts call “Frankenstein forces” to fight in the east.
Although Ukraine has managed to drive Russian forces away from Kharkiv, Russian units continue to shell parts of the city, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
It is think tank He stated that the Russian troops withdrawn from around Kharkiv are being redeployed in the Donetsk region.
South of Donetsk, Russia maintains full control of the port city of Mariupol.
The siege of Mariúpol, which lasted more than two months, ended on May 20.
Experts believe the fall of the city may allow Russian units to join the fight in other towns such as Zaporizhia, where shelling continues.
On the other hand, Ukraine reported that ten people died this Friday and 35 were injured after Russian cruise missiles hit the barracks of the national guard at a firing range in the Dnipro region, north of Zaporizhia.
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