by Tom Balmforth and Pavel Polityuk
KYIV (Reuters) – The Ukrainian army reached on Saturday the outskirts of Lyman, a city in eastern Ukraine considered a key strategic stake in a region whose annexation Moscow has just celebrated with great fanfare.
The recapture of Lyman, a city used by the Russian army as a logistics and transport base for its military operations in the northern Donetsk region, is the most significant victory recorded by Kyiv since the lightning counter-offensive launched in the Kharkiv region last month.
“We are already in Lyman but there is fighting,” said Serhii Cherevati, spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces in the east of the country.
In a video released by the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, two soldiers hang the blue and yellow national flag from a “Lyman” sign at the entrance to the city, located in the north of Donetsk province.
“October 1. We unfurl our national flag and put it on our land,” says one of the soldiers in this video, standing on a military vehicle.
Serhii Cherevati said that the Russian forces in Lyman numbered between 5,000 and 5,500 soldiers but that the troops encircled could be fewer, due in particular to the losses suffered.
“The Russian regrouping in the Lyman region is surrounded,” said the spokesman.
In Moscow, the Defense Ministry said its troops had withdrawn from Lyman to avoid being surrounded by the Ukrainian military.
“In connection with the emergence of an encirclement threat, Allied troops were withdrawn from the Krasny Lyman station in favor of more advantageous positions,” the ministry said, using the Russian name for the town.
KYIV COULD ADVANCE MORE EASILY IN DONBASS
The latest Russian operations update was released on Friday evening. On Saturday, the Defense Ministry’s Telegram channel posted a series of congratulatory messages, including one from President Vladimir Putin, on a day of celebrations in the military.
On Friday, Russian Vladimir Putin officially declared the annexation of the province of Donetsk and those of Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia during a ceremony in Moscow. An annexation justified according to him by the “right to self-determination of peoples” but immediately condemned by Westerners.
Kyiv called the ceremony a farce and promised to liberate the entire Ukrainian territory from Russian military occupation.
According to the spokesman for the Ukrainian army, the capture of Lyman would allow Kyiv to advance in the Luhansk region, which Moscow had announced in early July to control in full.
“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of Ukrainian Donbass. It is an opportunity to advance towards Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk, and it is very important psychologically,” he added.
Military operations in the area continue and Russian troops are trying in vain to break the encirclement, he said.
“Some surrender, they have many killed and wounded, but the operation is not over,” he said.
The Ukrainian governor of Luhansk, in exile, said for his part that Russian soldiers had asked for the right to leave the encircled area in safety but that their request had been rejected. Ukraine’s General Staff told Reuters it did not have this information.
(Report Pavel Polityuk, with Jonathan Landay, Felix Light and Mark Trevelyan; French version Marc Angrand)