Updates from the 92nd day of the invasion
-
The Luhansk governor says the fight for control of the key road is fierce.
-
The Ukrainian armed forces say dozens of cities have been bombed in the past 24 hours.
-
Four dead in bombings in northwestern Ukraine have been reported in Kharkiv.
-
Peskov and the West of Russia exchange recriminations over food supply problems.
-
The World Health Organization will consider a resolution on the health emergency in Ukraine.
The advance of Russian forces approached the Ukrainian troops surrounding the eastern part of Ukraine, briefly occupying positions on the last road of a crucial pair of Ukrainian-controlled cities before being repulsed, he said Thursday a Ukrainian official.
Three months after its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has abandoned its assault on the capital Kyiv and is trying to consolidate control of the industrial region east of Donbas, where it has supported a separatist uprising since 2014.
A woman stands in front of a damaged building in Irpin, Ukraine, on Thursday. (Natacha Pisarenko / The Associated Press)
Thousands of soldiers are attacking from three sides to try to encircle Ukrainian forces in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. If the two cities fell on the Siverskiy Donets River, almost the entire Donbas province of Luhansk would be under Russian control.
“Russia has the advantage, but we are doing everything we can,” said General Oleksiy Gromov, deputy head of the main operations department of the Ukrainian General Staff.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said about 50 Russian soldiers had reached the highway and “managed to get on their feet,” even setting up a checkpoint.
“The checkpoint was broken, they were pulled back … the Russian army is no longer in control of the route, but they are bombing it,” he said in an interview posted on social media.
TARGET | Ukrainian cities hit by Russian bombing:
Russia is bombing more than 40 Ukrainian cities
Salimah Shivji follows Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine.
He said it was possible for Ukrainian troops to abandon “one settlement, perhaps two. We must win the war, not the battle.”
“Clearly our boys are slowly retreating to more fortified positions; we need to contain this horde,” Gaidai said.
Partial view of a building in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, which has been damaged as a result of a missile attack. (Carlos Barria / Reuters)
Western military analysts see the battle for the two cities as a possible turning point in the war, now that Russia has defined its main target as the capture of the east.
Moscow has called its actions since February 24 a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and rid it of what it calls Western-promoted anti-Russian nationalism. Ukraine and the West say Russia has launched an unprovoked war of aggression.
Few cities in the Donbas escape the assault: Ukraine
Reuters reporters operating in the southernmost Russian-controlled territory saw evidence of Moscow’s advance on the city of Svitlodarsk, where Ukrainian forces withdrew earlier this week.
The city is now under the firm control of pro-Russian fighters, who have occupied the local government building and hung a red flag with the Soviet sickle and hammer on the door.
A man was driving a GAZ-21 Volga car on Thursday in front of a damaged building in Kharkiv. (Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP / Getty Images)
Images of drones filmed by Reuters reporters at the nearby abandoned battlefield showed dozens of craters marking a green field surrounded by shattered buildings. Pro-Russian fighters move into the trenches.
Russia’s recent gains in the Donbas follow the surrender of the Ukrainian garrison in Mariupol last week and suggest a change of momentum on the battlefield after weeks of Ukrainian forces advancing near northeastern Kharkiv. .
“Russia’s recent gains offer discouraging control over short-term expectations,” tweeted defense analyst Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies for the US-based think tank CNA.
Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser Vadym Denisenko said in a briefing that 25 Russian battalions were trying to surround Ukrainian forces.
The head of the Ukrainian armed forces, Valery Zaluzhny, called for more supplies of weapons from the West, especially “weapons that allow us to hit the enemy at a great distance,” he told the social media platform Telegram.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later warned that any supply of weapons that could reach Russian territory would be “a serious step towards an unacceptable escalation.”
4 killed in a Kharkiv bombing
The Russian advance has been backed by a massive artillery bombardment. The Ukrainian Armed Forces said more than 40 cities in the region had been bombed in the past 24 hours, destroying or damaging 47 civilian sites, including 38 houses and a school.
A man passed by an abandoned building damaged in a missile attack in the middle of the Russian invasion of the country, in the city of Kramatorsk, in the Donetsk region, on Thursday. (Carlos Berria / Reuters)
While the battle is concentrated in the southeast, Kharkiv in the northeast reported fatalities on Thursday. At least four civilians were killed and several wounded in Russian bombings in the city, the regional governor said.
“The occupiers are again bombing the regional center,” Kharkiv region governor Oleh Synehubov wrote in the Telegram messaging application. He urged neighbors to go to the shelters.
German Scholz says West remains committed
Global attention this week has focused on Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, which has halted exports of one of the world’s leading suppliers of cereals and cooking oil. The United Nations says the blockade could worsen world hunger.
Western countries have demanded that Moscow lift the blockade. Russia says Western financial sanctions on Russia are to blame for the food crisis, although it has not explained how this is related to its naval blockade on Ukrainian ports.
TARGET | How the war in Ukraine is affecting the food supply in Africa, the Middle East:
The Ukrainian war is deepening the global food crisis
The impact of the Ukrainian war extends far beyond the country’s borders, as Russian forces have destroyed crops and blocked ports along the Black Sea, affecting food supplies in Africa and the Middle East. Medium.
“We do not categorically accept these allegations. On the contrary, we blame Western countries for taking action that has led to this,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news conference with reporters on Thursday.
Peskov said Moscow expects Ukraine to accept its demands in future peace talks. He has demanded that Kyiv accept Russian sovereignty over the Crimean peninsula that Moscow seized in 2014 and recognize the independence of the territory claimed by the separatists.
In a speech to dignitaries in Davos, Switzerland, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Russian President Vladimir Putin should not be allowed to dictate the terms of any peace agreement.
“There will be no peace dictated,” Scholz said. “Ukraine will not accept this, nor will we.”
Two men clean up their damaged apartment after a strike in Kramatorsk in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine on Wednesday. (Aris Messinis / AFP / Getty Images)
Meanwhile, a proposal to condemn the regional health emergency triggered by Russia’s aggression on Ukraine will be presented to a World Health Organization (WHO) assembly on Thursday, sparking a rival Moscow resolution that does not mention its own role in the crisis.
The original proposal, backed by the United States and more than 40 other countries, condemns Russia’s actions, but fails to immediately suspend its voting rights at the UN health agency. The Russian document, supported by Syria, which echoes the language of the first text, will also be decided.
Both resolutions express “serious concerns about the ongoing health emergency in and around Ukraine,” but only the West-led proposal says the emergency “is provoked by the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine.”
The British ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Simon Manley, described Russia’s resolution as “a cynical attempt to distract, disrupt and confuse” on Twitter.