Brutal battle for Sieverodonetsk
Ukraine threatens heavy blow in “battle of fate”.
06/09/2022 11:33 am
According to Ukrainian sources, 10,000 civilians are still holding out in Sievjerodonetsk while the fighting, declared by President Zelenskyy to be a battle of fate, is raging in their city. An evacuation is no longer possible. Russia has already taken large parts of the strategically important city.
According to Ukrainian sources, Russian troops in eastern Ukraine are continuing their attacks on residential and industrial areas in the heavily contested city of Sieverodonetsk. Four people were killed as a result of the shelling of the chemical plant Azot, the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajday, wrote on Telegram. According to Ukrainian sources, the facility is used by hundreds of civilians as an air raid shelter. According to the mayor, an evacuation of the city is no longer possible. About 10,000 civilians are still in the city, says Olexander Strjuk.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces continued to control the industrial zone and adjacent areas. Russian troops destroyed “everything that could be used for defense,” Strjuk said. Defending the city against Russian troops is like a “Mission Impossible”. The Russian army is bombing the city “around the clock”.
Once the Ukrainian army has long-range artillery “to be able to duel with Russian artillery, our special forces can clear the city in two to three days,” Hajdaj said in an interview published on Thursday.
The United States and Britain recently announced the delivery of multiple rocket launchers to Ukraine, capable of attacking targets up to 80 kilometers away. The Ukrainian armed forces in Sievjerodonetsk are still “highly motivated” and the units are “all holding their positions,” Hajday announced.
“Perhaps the most difficult fight of the whole war”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared the battle for Sievjerodonetsk on the night a “battle of fate”: “It is a very brutal fight, very hard, perhaps the most difficult in this whole war,” said Zelenskyy in a video message. The main theater of war in the area remains Sievjerodonetsk. “Essentially, it is here where the fate of our Donbass will be decided.”
ntv reporter Stephan Richter summarized the significance of the heavy fighting from the Russian and Ukrainian point of view in the morning: “The Russians will most likely do everything they can to take the city this week. Everything that happens in relation to the situation in Sievjerodonetsk is decisive for the further course of this war. It would be a heavy blow for Ukraine if it could not hold the city.”
The Ukrainian General Staff said the Russian army was attacking with artillery and multiple rocket launchers, targeting civilian infrastructure in Sieverodonetsk and other locations. Russia denies accusations of attacking non-military targets. Ukrainian soldiers were recently pushed back to the outskirts of Sievjerodonetsk, which has already been largely destroyed by Russian bombing raids.
According to Ukraine, it still controls the twin city of Lysychansk, which is separated by a river. However, this is also exposed to heavy bombardment, there is “enormous destruction” there, said Hajdaj. The two cities are located in the Luhansk region, which together with the Donetsk region forms the Donbass. Before Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, pro-Russian separatists controlled about a third of Donbass. The Russian military has recently shifted the focus of its attack to this predominantly Russian-speaking region after suffering some serious setbacks in other parts of the country.