Russia’s gains in recent days point to a changing dynamic in the war, which is now in its fourth month. The invading forces seem close to capturing the entire Luhansk region of the Donbas, one of the Kremlin’s main war targets, despite Ukrainian resistance.
Russia’s Defense Minister said on Saturday that his troops and allied separatist forces now had full control of Lyman, the site of a railway junction and located west of the Siversky Donets River in the Donetsk region, neighboring Luhansk.
However, Hanna Malyar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, said the battle for Lyman continues, ZN.ua reports.
Russian forces are likely to attempt to cross the river in the coming days as part of the next phase of the Kremlin’s offensive in the Donbas, Britain’s defense minister said in his daily intelligence report on Saturday. .
Sievierodonetsk, some 60 km (40 miles) from Lyman on the eastern bank of the river and the largest city in the Donbas still held by Ukraine, is currently under heavy Russian assault.
“Sievierodonetsk is under constant enemy fire,” Ukraine’s police force said in a social media post on Saturday.
Russian artillery also bombarded the Lysychansk-Bakhmut road, which Russia had to take to close a pincer movement and encircle the Ukrainian forces.
“There was significant destruction in Lysychansk,” police said.
The governor of Luhansk, which together with Donetsk constitutes the Donbas, declared on Friday that Russian troops had already entered Sievierodonetsk. Ukrainian troops may have to withdraw from the city to avoid capture, Governor Serhiy Gaidai said.
Russian forces made slow but steady progress in the Donbas – large parts of which were already controlled by Moscow-backed separatists before the war – after failing to capture the capital kyiv shortly after their February 24 invasion of Ukraine.
Their tactics involve massive artillery bombardments and airstrikes that have devastated towns and villages.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had repelled eight assaults on Donetsk and Luhansk in the previous 24 hours. Russia’s attacks included artillery assaults in the Sievierodonetsk region, he said.
“Should Russia succeed in capturing these areas, it is highly likely that the Kremlin would regard it as an important political success and present it to the Russian people as justification for the invasion,” the British intelligence report said.
DESTROYED BUILDINGS
About 90 percent of buildings in Sievierodonetsk were damaged, Gaidai said, with 14 towers destroyed in the latest shelling. Several dozen medical personnel remained in Sievierodonetsk, but they had difficulty getting to hospitals because of the shelling, the governor of Luhansk said.
Reuters could not independently verify this information.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy remained defiant in his nightly address to Ukrainians.
“If the occupants think that Luhansk and Sievierodonetsk will be them, they are mistaken. Donbas will be Ukrainian”, declared Zelenskiy.
Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said that if Russian forces had begun to launch direct assaults on the built-up areas of Sievierodonetsk, they would likely struggle to gain ground in the city itself.
“Russian forces performed poorly in operations in built-up urban terrain throughout the war,” they said.
Russia says it is conducting a “special military operation” to demilitarize Ukraine and rid it of nationalists who threaten Russian speakers there. kyiv and Western countries say Russia’s claims are a false pretext for war.
Thousands of people, many of them civilians, have been killed and millions have fled their homes in the war. Russia’s destruction of entire urban areas has drawn widespread international condemnation, although Moscow denies targeting civilians.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not been deterred by a wide range of Western sanctions against Russia, nor by previous setbacks on the battlefield.
OIL DILEMMA
Russia’s gains in the east follow the withdrawal of its forces from the approaches to kyiv, and a Ukrainian counter-offensive that pushed its forces back from Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on Saturday that multiple Russian strikes had hit communities and infrastructure near Kharkiv.
On the diplomatic front, European Union officials said a deal could be reached by Sunday to ban deliveries of Russian oil by sea, which accounts for around 75% of the bloc’s supply, but not by pipeline.
Mr Zelenskiy criticized the EU for delaying such a ban.
But his country has also received a steady supply of arms from its allies. In the latest such delivery, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Saturday that Ukraine had started receiving Harpoon anti-ship missiles from Denmark and self-propelled howitzers from the United States.