KYIV/LVIV/KRAMATORSK: Russian forces have blown up a bridge connecting Ukraine’s Svyarodonetsk city to another city across the river, cutting off a possible evacuation route for civilians, local officials said on Sunday.
Svirodonetsk has become the center of the fight for control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region. Parts of the city have been crushed in the bloodiest fighting since the invasion of the Kremlin on 24 February.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address, “The key strategic goal of the occupiers has not changed: they are pressing into Svyarodonetsk, there is serious fighting going on – literally for every meter,” Russia The army was trying to deploy reserves. Force to the Donbass.
Serhi Gaidai, governor of Luhansk province, said on Sunday that Ukrainian and Russian forces were fighting street-to-street.
Russian forces have captured most of the city, but Ukrainian troops control an industrial area and the Azot chemical plant where hundreds of civilians are taking refuge.
But the Russians had destroyed a bridge over the Siversky Donets River, which connected Svirodonetsk with its twin city of Lisichansk, Gaidai said.
This left only one of the three bridges standing.
“If the bridge collapses after new shelling, the city will really be cut off. There will be no way to leave Svyarodonetsk in a vehicle,” Gaidai said, adding to the lack of a ceasefire agreement and no agreed evacuation corridor.
Ukrainian Army Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny said that Russia’s massive artillery in that area gave it a tenfold advantage.
But, he added in a Facebook post, “Despite everything, we remain in positions. Every meter of Ukraine’s land is covered in blood – not only ours, but those of the occupiers.”
The head of the Svirodonetsk administration said a little more than a third of the city is under the control of the Ukrainian military, with about two thirds in Russian hands.
“Our (army) is holding the defensive line firmly,” Oleksandr Striuk told national TV.
Gedai said that in Lisichansk, a six-year-old was killed in Russian shelling.
Reuters could not independently verify these accounts.
strategic impact
After being forced to reduce its initial campaign goals following the February 24 invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has turned its attention to increasing control in the Donbass, where pro-Russian separatists have occupied the area since 2014.
The fall of Svyarodonetsk, the last pocket of Ukrainian land held in the strategic Luhansk region, would move Russia a major step closer to one of the declared goals of a “special military operation” by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Elsewhere, Russian cruise missiles destroyed a large depot containing US and European weapons in the Ternopil region of western Ukraine, Russia’s Interfax agency reported.
Ternopil’s governor said rockets fired from the Black Sea in the city of Chortkiv partially destroyed a military facility and injured 22 people. A local official said no weapon was kept there.
Reuters could not independently confirm the individual accounts.
Moscow has repeatedly criticized the United States and other countries for supplying weapons to Ukraine. Putin said this month that Russia would strike new targets if the West supplies Ukraine with long-range missiles for use in high-precision mobile rocket systems.
Ukraine’s leaders have recently made requests for more heavy weapons. On Sunday, the Ukrainian General Staff said in a post on Facebook that the chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, had spoken to top US military official General Mark Milley, and reiterated his request for more heavy artillery systems.
According to the General Staff of Ukraine, Russian forces were firing mortars and artillery south and southwest of Svyarodonetsk. But it said Ukrainian forces had repelled Russian attempts to advance towards some communities.
Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield reports.
The Ukrainian military has proved more resilient than expected, but the US-based Institute for the Study of War said that since they use their last stock of Soviet-era weapons and munitions, they will need continued Western support.
Putin says Russia’s actions are aimed at disarmament and “rejection” of Ukraine. Kyiv and its allies call this an unprovoked war of aggression to capture the region.
Away from the battlefield, WTO members gathered in Geneva on Sunday on top of a challenging agenda necessitating tackling global food security from Russia’s invasion of wheat-producing Ukraine.
WTO spokesman Dan Pruzyn told reporters that tensions escalated during a closed-door session where several delegates condemned Russia’s war, including envoys from Kyiv, who met with a standing ovation.
Then, just before Russian Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov spoke, about three dozen delegates “walked out,” the spokesman said.
Also on Sunday, the leader of the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk region in the Donbass said there was no reason to pardon two British nationals sentenced to death last week after being caught fighting for Ukraine.
A court in Donetsk on Thursday found Aiden Aslin and Sean Piner – and Moroccan Brahim Sadoun – guilty of overthrowing the republic for “mercenary activities”.
Britain maintains that Aslin and Pinner were regular soldiers and should be exempted from prosecution for participating in hostilities under the Geneva Convention. The separatists say they have committed serious crimes and have a month to appeal.
Aslin’s family said that he and Pinner “are not mercenaries, and never were.”
Separately, the family of Jordan Gatley, a former British soldier, said on social media that he was killed while fighting for Ukraine in Svyarodonetsk.
(with Reuters and AFP)