The battle for two key cities in eastern Ukraine is heading for a “terrible climax,” said Ukrainian presidential adviser Volodymyr Zelensky, as the war in Ukraine is set to begin in its fourth month on Friday.
Russia’s efforts to take Severodonetsk and Lisichansk – the two remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Luhansk – have turned into a bloody war of attrition, with heavy casualties on both sides. Moscow, in the last two weeks, has managed to achieve stable profits.
“The fight is entering a kind of terrible culmination,” Alexei Arestovich said in an interview late Wednesday.
Sergei Haidai, the governor of Luhansk region, one of the two in Eastern Donbass, said on Thursday morning that Russian forces had been “successful” in their progress. He added that enemy forces had captured Loskutivka, a village south of Lisichansk that threatened to isolate Ukrainian troops.
“To avoid the encirclement, our command can order the troops to withdraw to new positions,” Haidai said in a Telegram post. Russia’s state-run TASS news agency quoted Russian-backed separatists as saying that Lisichansk was now surrounded and cut off by supplies after Russia took over a road connecting the city with Ukrainian territories.
Russia, meanwhile, is believed to control all of Severodonetsk, with the exception of the Azot chemical plant. Hundreds of civilian and Ukrainian forces are trapped. Footage posted on social media on Thursday showed heavy fighting outside the industrial zone where the plant is located.
The relentless Russian shelling of the Azot plant reflects the previous bloody siege of the Azovstal steel plant in the southern port of Mariupol, where hundreds of fighters and civilians had taken shelter.
Commenting on Russia’s progress in the east, Zelensky said in an evening video address that Russia’s goal there was “to destroy the entire Donbass step by step.”
Elsewhere in the country, local authorities said Russia continued to fire rockets at their cities.
In the southern city of Nikolaev, a local mayor said Russian rockets fired the day before had killed at least one person and damaged buildings, including a school.
The weight of Russian shelling outside Donbass fell on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, just across the Russian border. The war-torn city has suffered some of the heaviest bombing since the war began, after experiencing a relative lull – forcing some locals to return home.
There are now fears among the Ukrainian military that Moscow is preparing a new attack on Kharkiv, despite a successful counter-offensive that pushed Russian troops out of its suburbs earlier this month.
Andriy Mogila, a member of Ukraine’s armed forces, told CNN on Wednesday that Russia could launch a new attack on the city this week.
As Ukraine raises concerns about Russia’s progress in the east and north, the country is also likely to gain morale on Thursday as European Union leaders are expected to formally accept Ukraine as a candidate to join the bloc in a symbolic Western show.
The Ukrainian military will also welcome a statement made by Alexei Reznikov, the country’s defense minister, who said on Thursday that much-sought-after HIMARS long-range missile systems had begun arriving from the United States.
“HIMARS has arrived in Ukraine. Thanks to my colleague and friend, @SecDef Lloyd J. Austin III, for these powerful tools! Summer will be hot for the Russian occupiers. And the last for some of them, “the minister wrote on Twitter.
After weeks of complaints from Kyiv that the West is delaying the supply of heavy weapons, there are now growing signs that weapons arriving from abroad are beginning to affect the fighting. Ukraine earlier this week destroyed a Russian tug near Snake Island with a Harpoon missile and also carried out its first attack on a Russian oil platform in the Black Sea.
Ukraine has repeatedly stated that its goals to launch a new counter-offensive to regain lost territory in the south, including the Kherson region – where it has recently made some profits – depend on the West’s willingness to supply heavy weapons.
“We need to liberate our land and win, but faster, much faster,” Zelenski said in a video message released early Thursday.
“What is quickly needed is parity on the battlefield to stop this devil’s armada and push it beyond Ukraine’s borders.
Add Comment