KYIV/KONSTYANTYNIVKA, Ukraine: Battles intensified on Saturday for Lisichansk, Ukraine’s last stronghold in the strategic eastern province of Luhansk, while explosions rocked a southern city as civilian numbers from Russian attacks climbed into towns behind front lines. Gave.
Rodion Miroshnik, the pro-Moscow self-styled ambassador to Russia of the Luhansk People’s Republic, told Russian television that “Lisichansk has been brought under control,” but added: “Unfortunately, it has not been liberated yet.”
Russian media showed videos of Luhansk militia waving flags and cheering on the streets of Lisichansk, but Ukraine National Guard spokesman Ruslan Muzychuk told Ukrainian national television that the city remained in Ukrainian hands.
“Now fierce fighting is taking place near Lysychansk, although, fortunately, the city is not surrounded and is under the control of the Ukrainian army,” Muzychuk said.
He said that the conditions in the Lysychansk and Bakhmut regions, as well as in the Kharkiv region, were the most difficult in the entire front line.
“Here the enemy’s goal is access to the administrative border of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In addition, in the Sloviansk direction, the enemy is attempting attack actions,” he said.
The mayor of the southern region of Mykolaiv, bordering Odessa’s important Black Sea port, Oleksandr Senkevich, reported powerful explosions in the city.
“Stay in the shelters!” He wrote on the Telegram messaging app as soon as the air raid siren sounded.
The cause of the blasts was not immediately clear, although Russia later said it had targeted military command posts in the area.
Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield reports.
A missile struck an apartment block near Odessa on Friday, killing at least 21 people, officials said. An explosion at a shopping mall in the city of Kremenchuk on Monday killed at least 19 people.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday condemned the attacks, saying the missiles were “conscious, deliberately targeted at Russian terror, and not by mistake or accident.”
In his nightly televised address on Saturday, he said it would be a “very difficult road” to victory, but it was necessary for the Ukrainians to maintain their resolve and “aggressively … broken.”
“There is a sense of easing from the front in many areas, but the war is not over,” he said. “Unfortunately, it is intensifying at different places and we must not forget that. We should help the army, volunteers, help those who are left alone at this time.”
Kyiv says Moscow has intensified missile attacks on cities far from the main eastern battlefields and deliberately targeted civilian sites. Ukrainian troops on the Eastern Front meanwhile described intense artillery barrages that destroyed residential areas.
Thousands of civilians have been killed and cities have been leveled since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated the Russian denial that its military had targeted civilians.
The chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, inspected Russian troops in what he calls a “special military operation” in Moscow, Russia’s defense ministry said, although it was not clear whether he was in Ukraine.
The inspections followed slow but steady gains by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine with relentless artillery aid, with a focus for Moscow as it reduced its broader combat goals of toppling the government following fierce Ukrainian resistance.
Russia is seeking to pull Ukrainian forces out of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces in the industrialized eastern Donbass region, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv since Russia’s first military intervention in Ukraine in 2014.
“Surely they are trying to demoralize us. Some may be affected by this, but for us it only brings more hatred and determination, ”said a Ukrainian soldier returning from Lisichansk.
Houses ‘burning’
Russian forces seized Svyarodonetsk, the sister city of Lisichansk, last month after some of the heaviest fighting of the war, which turned entire districts to rubble. Other settlements are now facing similar bombings.
Lugansk governor Serhi Gaidai said on Telegram firefight that residents of Lisichansk were stopped from extinguishing the fire, adding: “Private houses in the attacked villages are burning down one by one.”
Ukraine has called for more weapons from the West, saying its forces have been heavily exhausted by Russian forces.
A war crimes prosecutor (C) and a defender (R) and a civilian look at a building destroyed after it was hit by a missile attack in the Ukrainian city of Sergiyevka, near Odessa, on July that killed at least 18 people and 30 were injured. 1, 2022. (AFP)
Soldiers on a break from fighting and speaking in Konstyantynivka, a market town about 115 km (72 mi) west of Lysychansk, said they were, for now, keeping the supply road to the embattled city open, despite Russian bombardment. have been successful.
“We still use the road because we have to, but it is within range of the Russian artillery,” said one soldier, who usually lives in Kyiv and asked not to be named, as Comrade Pass I relax, eat a sandwich or have ice cream.
“The Russian strategy right now is to open up any building we can find ourselves in. When they destroyed it, they moved on to the next one,” said the soldier.
Reuters journalists spotted an unexploded missile into the ground in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of the Donbass city of Kramatorsk on Saturday evening.
The missile fell in a wooded area between residential tower blocks. Police and the army cordoned off an area a few meters around the missile and asked spectators to stand behind. Artillery fire and several large explosions were heard earlier in the evening in central Kramatorsk.
Despite being battered in the east, the Ukrainian military has made some progress elsewhere, forcing Russia to withdraw from Snake Island, a Black Sea area southeast of Odessa, which Moscow called at the start of the war. was captured in
Russia used Snake Island to blockade Ukraine, which is one of the world’s largest grain exporters and a major producer of seeds for vegetable oils. The disruptions have helped fuel a rise in global grain and food prices.
Russia, which is also a big grain producer, denies that it has blamed Western sanctions for hurting its exports.