Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged on Sunday that Kyiv’s forces had withdrawn lisichansk in the east donbass The area followed the Russian attack, but vowed to regain control of the area with the help of long-range Western weapons.
Russia said capturing the city of Lisichansk less than a week after taking neighboring Svyardonetsk gave it full control of the eastern Luhansk region – a political victory that complements a key goal of the Kremlin war. The focus of the battlefield has now shifted to the neighboring Donetsk region, where Kyiv still controls the area.
Zelensky said in his nightly video address, “If the commanders of our army remove people from certain points on the front, where the enemy has the greatest advantage in firepower, and this also applies to Lisichansk, then it means There’s only one.”
“Thanks to the increase in the supply of modern weapons, we will return thanks to our strategy.”
Zelensky said Russia was focusing its firepower on the Donbas front, but Ukraine would strike back with long-range weapons such as the US-supplied HIMARS rocket launchers.
“The fact that we protect the lives of our soldiers, our people, plays an equally important role. We will rebuild the walls, we will win back the land, and the people must be protected above all,” Zelensky said.
Since abandoning the attack on the capital Kyiv, Russia has focused its military campaign on the industrial Donbass heartland that includes the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukraine behind proxies since 2014.
Russia says it is occupying the Luhansk region to give it to the self-proclaimed Russian-backed Luhansk People’s Republic, whose independence was recognized on the eve of the war.
Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed President Vladimir Putin that Luhansk had been “liberated”, the Defense Ministry said, adding that Russia had previously said its forces had captured the villages and cities around Lysichansk. has surrounded.
Ukraine’s military command said its forces had been forced to retreat from the city.
“Continuing to defend the city will have fatal consequences. In order to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders, the decision to withdraw was taken,” it said in a statement on social media.
Ukrainian officials, who say the reference to “liberating” Ukrainian territory is Russian propaganda, had reported intense artillery barrages on residential areas.
In the west of the Donetsk region, at least six people were killed when powerful shelling from multiple rocket launchers hit the Ukrainian city of Slovakia on Sunday, local officials said.
costly campaign
Thousands of civilians have been killed and cities leveled since Russia’s invasion of Russia on February 24, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of deliberately targeting civilians. Moscow denies this.
Russia says what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine aimed at protecting Russian-speaking nationalists from nationalists. Ukraine and its Western allies say it is an unfounded excuse for open aggression aimed at capturing the region.
Neil Melvin of London-based think tank RUSI said Russia would try to frame its progress in Luhansk as a pivotal moment in the war, but it came at a high cost to Russia’s military.
“Ukraine’s position was never that they could defend all this. What they are trying to do is to slow down the Russian attack and inflict maximum damage while they prepare for a counterattack,” he said. .
Kharkiv attack
Zelensky said Russia “brutally” attacked Kharkiv, Kramatorsk and Sloviask with rocket attacks, killing six people and injuring 20 in Sloviask alone.
Russia’s defense ministry also said on Sunday that it had attacked military infrastructure in the northeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, where a Reuters reporter said Ukrainian forces were building fortifications after night shelling. Was getting it done.
Outside a school in Kharkiv, some residents threw debris into a large pit created by rocket attacks early in the morning, while others helped repair damaged homes.
“The wife was lucky to get up early in the morning because the ceiling fell right where she was sleeping,” a resident, Oleksiy Mihulin, told Reuters.
Read more: Russia claims control of major city in eastern Ukraine
Russia also reported explosions in Belgorod on Sunday, about 70 km (44 miles) from Kharkiv on the Russian border, which it said killed at least three people and destroyed homes.
“The sound was so loud that I jumped up, I woke up, got very scared and started screaming,” the Belgorod resident told Reuters.
Moscow has accused Kyiv of several attacks on Belgorod and other areas bordering Ukraine. Kyiv has never claimed responsibility for any of these incidents.
military base hit
Ukraine said its air force made about 15 flights “in almost all directions of the hostility”, destroying equipment and two ammunition depots.
In the city of Melitopol in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, Ukrainian forces attacked a military logistics base with more than 30 strikes on Sunday, the city’s exiled mayor Ivan Fedorov said. An official established in Russia confirmed that there had been attacks in the city.
Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield reports.
Ukraine has repeatedly urged the West to speed up arms supplies, saying its military has been heavily exhausted.
Speaking on a visit to Kyiv, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government would provide Ukraine with additional armored vehicles, as well as impose tougher sanctions against Russia.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told broadcaster ARD that Germany was discussing security guarantees for Ukraine with its allies after the war, although it was clear that these “would not be the same as if someone were a member of NATO”.
(Additional reporting by Ron Popsky, Reuters Bureau and Leah Millais in Kharkiv; Writing by David Lauder, Lincoln Feast, and Aidan Lewis; Editing by William Mallard, Edmund Blair, Raisa Kasolovsky and Paul Simao)