Donetsk and Luhansk form the Donbas, the industrialized eastern part of Ukraine which has been the site of the greatest battle in Europe for generations. Russia says it wants to wrest control of all of Donbas from Ukraine on behalf of Moscow-backed separatists in two self-proclaimed people’s republics.
After Russian forces took control of Lysychansk, the last stronghold of the Ukrainian resistance Luhansk, on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said they now expect Moscow to focus its efforts in particular on the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk Donetsk .
Heavy fighting is taking place on the edge of the Luhansk region, its governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukrainian television, saying that Russian regular army and reserve forces had been sent there in an apparent effort to cross the Siverskiy Donets river.
“They are taking quite heavy casualties,” Gaidai said.
“Some battalions have been moved there to supplement the manpower they need… They don’t take all their wounded with them. The hospitals are packed, and so are the morgues.”
“There is still a lot of shelling in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. They are shelling everything in their path.”
Reuters could not independently verify his statements.
On Tuesday, Russian forces struck a market and residential area in Sloviansk, killing at least two people and injuring seven, according to local officials.
A Reuters reporter at the scene saw yellow smoke billowing from a car supply store and flames engulf rows of market stalls as firefighters tried to put out the blaze.
Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said Sloviansk and the nearby town of Kramatorsk had come under heavy shelling overnight. “There is no safe place without shelling in the Donetsk region”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, calling it a “special military operation” to demilitarize the country, eradicate nationalists and protect Russian speakers.
kyiv and the West claim that Russia is engaging in unprovoked imperial-style land grabbing in its fellow former Soviet republic, and accuse Moscow of war crimes.
A RUINED CITY
Lysychansk, once a city of 100,000 people, lies in ruins. Buildings are scorched and shell-holes, cars overturned and streets littered with rubble, testimony to the brutality of the battle she endured.
Tatiana Glushenko, a 45-year-old resident of Lysychansk, told Reuters that people were still sheltering in basements and bomb shelters, including children and the elderly.
Glushenko said she didn’t think she would be safe in other parts of Ukraine, so she stayed in Lysychansk with her family.
“All of Ukraine is being bombed: Western Ukraine, Central Ukraine, Dnipro, kyiv, everywhere. So we decided not to risk our lives and to stay here, at home at least,” she said. addition.
Glushenko now hopes for peace to return to his ruined town, but for elderly residents Sergei and Evgenia, the prospect of rebuilding from the ruins is daunting.
“We have to get out of here somehow,” said Sergei, sitting in a dark shelter with a single flashlight.
“The roof is broken. It needs to be repaired, but how and how to pay for it?… Winter is coming soon too,” Evgenia said.
Luhansk Governor Gaidai said Russian forces were looting Lysychansk and its twin town Sievierodonetsk.
“They hunt pro-Ukraine residents. They make deals with collaborators, they take over apartments where soldiers lived, break in and take clothes,” he said.
“Everything is being destroyed. Entire collections of books in Ukrainian. It’s already seen – 1939 with Nazi Germany”.
Reuters could not immediately verify this information.
Russia says it’s not targeting civilians.
A “LONG WAR” IN PERSPECTIVE
Moscow intensified its war rhetoric with Duma Speaker Viatcheslav Volodin declaring that Ukraine had become a “terrorist state”.
Remarks by the speaker of the lower house of parliament suggest that Russia may be expanding its declared war aims beyond the Donbas, after abandoning offensives on the capital kyiv and second-largest city Kharkiv in the face of fierce resistance in the early conflict.
In another sign that Russia is preparing for a long war, the Duma passed two bills on first reading that would allow the government to compel companies to supply the army and work overtime for personnel to support the invasion.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a phone call that he believed the Ukrainian military could retake territory recently captured by Russia.
Boris Johnson briefed Zelenskiy on the latest deliveries of British military equipment, including 10 self-propelled artillery systems and rover ammunition, which would arrive in the coming days and weeks, a spokesman said.
The Russian invasion left thousands dead, displaced millions and leveled cities, especially in the Russian-speaking areas of eastern and south-eastern Ukraine. It has also pushed up global energy and food prices and raised fears of famine in the poorest countries, with Ukraine and Russia both major grain producers.
According to official documents, Ukraine has asked Turkey for help in investigating three Russian-flagged vessels as part of kyiv’s efforts to investigate what it considers a theft of grain from Russian-occupied territory . Russia denies stealing Ukrainian grain.