Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – After weeks of fierce fighting, Ukrainian forces will withdraw from a besieged city in the eastern part of the country to avoid the encirclement, a regional governor said on Friday.
The city of Severodonetsk, the administrative center of the Luhansk region, is facing relentless Russian bombing. Ukrainian troops fought the Russians in house-to-house battles before retreating to a huge chemical plant on the outskirts of the city, where they hid in vast underground structures.
In recent days, Russian forces have succeeded around Severodonetsk and the neighboring city of Lisichansk, on a steep bank across the river, in an attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces.
Luhansk Governor Sergei Haidai said Ukrainian troops had been ordered to leave Severodonetsk to prevent this.
“We will have to withdraw our boys,” he said. “It makes no sense to stand on the destroyed positions, because the number of victims in poorly fortified areas will grow every day.
Haidai said that the Ukrainian forces had “been ordered to withdraw to new positions and continue fighting there”, but did not give further details.
He said the Russians were also advancing on Lisichansk from Zolote and Toshkivka, adding that Russian intelligence had raided the outskirts of the city but had been driven out by its defenders.
The governor added that a bridge on the highway leading to Lisichansk had been severely damaged by a Russian air strike and had become unusable for trucks. The claim cannot be verified independently.
Russia’s defense ministry announced on Friday that four Ukrainian battalions and some “foreign mercenaries” with a total of about 2,000 troops were “completely blocked” near Hirske and Zolote, south of Lisichansk.
After a failed attempt to capture Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, in the early stages of the invasion, which began on February 24, Russian forces have shifted their focus to the Donbass region, where Ukrainian forces have been fighting Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.
The Russian military controls about 95% of Luhansk province and about half of the neighboring Donetsk region, the two districts that make up Donbass.
After repeated requests to his Western allies for heavier armaments to counter Russia’s advantage in firepower, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov said a response had arrived in the form of US medium-range missile systems.
A U.S. defense official confirmed on Wednesday that all four promised high-mobility artillery missile systems, or HIMARS, were in the hands of Ukrainian forces, but said it was unclear whether they had yet been used.
The United States approved the provision of precision control systems in late May, and once in the region, Ukrainian forces needed about three weeks of training to operate them. The missiles can travel about 45 miles (70 kilometers).
The United States will send an additional $ 450 million in military aid to Ukraine, including four more of the medium-range missile systems, ammunition and other supplies, U.S. officials said Thursday.
IN OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:
A pro-Moscow administration official in the southern city of Kherson, who was captured by Russian troops at the start of the invasion, was killed in an explosion on Friday.
The pro-Russian regional administration in Kherson said Dmitry Savlyuchenko was killed when his vehicle exploded in what she described as a “terrorist attack”.
There was no immediate taking of responsibility.
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