Ukrainian defenders hold firm in Donbas city under heavy fire


The shelling was so intense that it was not possible to assess casualties and damage, said Luhansk region governor Serhiy Gaidai. Dozens of buildings have been destroyed in the past few days.

“The situation has gotten extremely worse,” Gaidai said.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government has urged the West to provide it with more longer-range weapons in order to turn the tide of the war, which is now in its fourth month.

The battle for Sievierodonetsk, which sits on the eastern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River, has become the center of attention as Russia makes slow but solid gains in the Donbas, which includes the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

Russia concentrated enormous firepower in a small area, in contrast to previous phases of the conflict when its forces were often too spread out.

Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said the Russians had still failed to encircle the city and that Ukrainian defenders had inflicted “frightening casualties” on them.

But the Ukrainians are also suffering serious casualties themselves, both civilians and combatants, they said in a briefing document.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin is inflicting untold suffering on Ukrainians and demanding horrific sacrifices from his own people in order to take over a city that does not deserve the cost, even for him,” they said.

The Russian fixation on Sievierodonetsk took resources away from other battlefronts and as a result they made little progress elsewhere.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine which aimed to seize and occupy the whole country has become a desperate and bloody offensive to seize a single city in the east while defending important but limited gains in the south and the east,” they said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the military situation in the Donbas – parts of which are controlled by Moscow-backed separatists – was very complicated but the defenses held firm in a number of places, including Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.

“It’s indescribably difficult there. And I’m grateful to everyone who stood up to that onslaught,” he said in his nightly video address.

SEND GUNS

Mr Zelenskiy also expressed hope that Ukraine’s allies will provide much-needed weapons and he expects “good news” in the coming days.

Ukraine has begun receiving Harpoon anti-ship missiles from Denmark and self-propelled howitzers from the United States, its defense ministry said on Saturday.

Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak reiterated his call for long-range American-made multiple rocket launchers. US officials told Reuters that such systems were being actively considered, and a decision could be made in the coming days.

“It’s hard to fight when you’re attacked 70km away and you have nothing to fight back,” Podolyak posted on Twitter. “We need effective weapons”.

Zelenskiy said in a television interview that he believed Russia would agree to talks if Ukraine could regain all the territory it has lost since Putin’s February 24 invasion.

Nevertheless, Mr Zelenskiy ruled out the idea of ​​using force to regain all the territories that Ukraine has lost to Russia since 2014, which includes the southern peninsula of Crime, annexed by Moscow that year. .

“I don’t believe we can restore all of our territory by military means. If we decide to go down this path, we will lose hundreds of thousands of people,” he said.

Russia says it is conducting a “special military operation” to demilitarize Ukraine and rid it of nationalists who threaten Russian speakers there. Ukraine and Western countries claim that Russia’s claims are a false pretext for a war of aggression.

Thousands of people, including many civilians, have been killed and many millions have fled their homes, either to safer parts of Ukraine or to other countries.



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