Officials in eastern Ukraine say the Russian bombing of Sievierodonetsk has been so intense that it has not been possible to assess the casualties and damage, as Moscow is approaching the largest city Ukraine still has in the Donbas.
“The situation has increased dramatically,” Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, said on Sunday. Witnesses said the city was being bombed “200 times an hour” as Russian forces try to cut off reinforcement lines and surround its remaining defenders.
Ukrainian authorities have described the conditions in Sievierodonetsk as reminiscent of Mariupol, the southern port city that collapsed on May 20 after nearly three months of relentless assault.
Fighting intensified when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited Ukrainian troops at the front in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, in his first official appearance outside the Kyiv area since the beginning. of the war. “You risk your lives for all of us and for our country,” Zelenskiy told the soldiers.
He added that Russian bombing had destroyed all of the city’s critical infrastructure and said taking Sievierodonetsk was Russia’s “main target” right now.
“As a result of the Russian strikes in Sievierodonetsk, all the city’s critical infrastructure is destroyed … More than two-thirds of the city’s housing stock is destroyed,” Zelenskiy said in a televised speech.
The battle for Sievierodonetsk, located on the eastern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River, about 90 miles south of the Russian border, is in the spotlight as Russia gains slow but solid gains in the industrial Donbas, which includes the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. .
Failing to take the capital Kyiv in the first phase of the war, Russia is trying to consolidate its control over the Donbas, much of which is already controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. It has concentrated great firepower in a small area, in contrast to the earlier phase of the conflict, when its forces often spread out sparsely, whipping towns and cities with artillery and airstrikes.
Regional officials reported that Russian forces were “assaulting” Sievierodonetsk and that street fighting was taking place, leaving no electricity and mobile services.
The mayor of Sievierodonetsk, Oleksandr Striuk, said that the remaining residents of the city, which had a pre-war population of about 100,000, were at risk of being exposed to bombing when they left their homes. houses to access the water. Striuk has estimated that 1,500 civilians have already died from Russian attacks or from a lack of medicines and diseases that could not be treated.
Russia has also stepped up its efforts to take the neighboring town of Lysychansk, where, according to Haidai, a Russian shell fell on a residential building over the weekend and killed a child.
Zelensky’s office posted a video in the Telegram where he was wearing a bulletproof vest and was shown destroyed buildings in and around Kharkiv, from which Russian forces have been withdrawing in recent weeks.
Last Thursday, Russian artillery struck the city of Kharkiv for the first time in two weeks, just as life in Ukraine’s second city began to return to normal after Moscow troops were expelled from their cities. peripheral peoples. At least nine people have been killed and 17 injured in attacks in the northern part of the city.
Zelenskiy expressed hope that his allies would provide the much-needed weapons and said he expected “good news” in the coming days.
A few days ago, the United States and its allies indicated that they would provide Ukraine with increasingly sophisticated weapons, including the multi-launch rocket systems that Kyiv has appealed to. Ukraine has said it has begun receiving harpoon anti-aircraft missiles from Denmark and self-propelled shells from the United States.
Presidential Adviser Mykhailo Podolyak reiterated a call to launch long-range, long-range rockets made in the United States. U.S. officials said such systems are being actively considered, with a possible decision in the coming days.
“It’s hard to fight when you’re attacked from 70 km away and you have nothing to fight with,” Podolyak posted on Twitter. “We need effective weapons.”
Meanwhile, Zelensky said in a television interview that he believed Russia would accept talks if Ukraine could regain all the territory it has lost since the invasion.
Zelensky dismissed the idea of using force to reclaim all the land Ukraine has lost to Russia since 2014, which includes the southern Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow that year.
“I do not think we can restore our entire territory by military means. If we decide to go this route, we will lose hundreds of thousands of people, ”he said.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report