Updates on the 96th day of the invasion
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A French journalist was reportedly shot dead near Severodonetsk.
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Russia says it hit a shipbuilding facility in the Black Sea town of Mykolaiv.
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Biden says the US will not send long-range rocket systems to Ukraine.
Russian troops advanced further into a key city in eastern Ukraine and fought street-by-street with Kyiv forces on Monday in a battle that, according to the mayor, has left the city in ruins and expelled dozens of thousands of people in your home.
The Russian approach to Severodonetsk has already left the city “completely ruined,” said Mayor Oleksandr Striuk. Artillery shelling has destroyed critical infrastructure and damaged 90% of buildings, and has largely cut off electricity and communications in a city that was once home to 100,000 people.
“The death toll is rising every hour, but we can’t count the dead and wounded in the midst of street fighting,” Striuk told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, adding that Moscow troops were advancing a few islands. more towards the city center. .
He said there were only 12,000 to 13,000 people left in the city, sheltered in basements and bunkers to escape the Russian bombing, a situation reminiscent of the siege of Mariupol that trapped residents and caused some of the worst suffering of the war.
Ukrainian tanks move on Monday in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. (Francisco Seco / The Associated Press)
Striuk estimates that 1,500 civilians have died in his hometown since the war began, due to Russian attacks and terrible conditions, including a lack of medicine or medical treatment. More than 20,000 people are believed to have died in Mariupol.
A 32-year-old French journalist, Frederic Leclerc-Imhoff, was killed Monday near Severodonetsk when he was hit by shrapnel while covering Ukrainians evacuating the area, according to his employer, the French channel BFM TV.
Battles in eastern and southern Ukraine
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military says Russian forces have strengthened their positions on the northeast and southeastern outskirts of Severodonetsk, 145 kilometers south of the Russian border, in an area that is the last pocket of control. of the Ukrainian government in Luhansk.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said the Russians were also pushing for nearby Lysychansk. In addition to the journalist, two civilians were killed and five others were injured in the latest Russian bombing, he said.
The Russian advance on Severodonetsk and Lysychansk on both sides of the strategically important Siverskiy Donetsk River is part of a total push, said Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov.
The intensity of the latest fighting and the fact that Russia has shot down troops from its Far East have surprised Ukrainians, who are trying to hold out until more weapons arrive, Zhdanov said.
“The Ukrainian army cannot afford to lose as many soldiers as the Russians,” Zhdanov said. “Ukrainians expect Russia to end soon.”
Russian pressure also continued south on Monday. Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said an artillery attack on a shipyard in the southern port of Mykolaiv had destroyed Ukrainian armored vehicles parked there.
In the Kherson region, Russia’s deputy head of the regional administration, Kirill Stremousov, told the Russian state news agency Tass that the grain from last year’s harvest is being delivered to Russian buyers added that “obviously there is a lot of grain here.” by preventing Ukraine from exporting its harvest.
Ask for more western weapons
Military analysts painted the fight for Severodonetsk as part of a race against time for the Kremlin. The city is key to Russian efforts to quickly complete the capture of the eastern industrial region of the Donbas, before more Western weapons arrive to bolster Ukraine’s defense.
Western weapons have already helped Ukraine thwart a Russian advance on the capital in the first weeks of the war. This failure forced Moscow to withdraw, regroup, and pursue the more limited goal of seizing the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists already had expanses of territory and have been fighting Ukrainian troops for eight years. .
But in a possible setback for Ukraine, President Joe Biden seemed to reject reports that the U.S. was considering sending long-range rocket systems to the country.
A rocket launcher was transported on Monday by Ukrainian forces near Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region. (Carlos Barria / Reuters)
On Monday, Biden told reporters outside the White House that there are no plans for the United States to send long-range rocket systems to Ukraine amid reports that the measure is being considered.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said it was a “reasonable” decision.
He said that “otherwise, if our cities were attacked, the Russian armed forces would carry out their threat and attack the centers where these criminal decisions are made.”
Medvedev added that “some of them are not in Kyiv.”
Blackmail sanctions
Russia, meanwhile, has pressured the West to lift sanctions against it as it tries to shift the blame for the growing food crisis, which has caused prices to rise in Africa.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged France not to succumb to “blackmail” at a meeting Monday with French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna.
Zelensky has urged the European Union to increase sanctions against Russia, especially with regard to its lucrative energy sector. It was supposed to address a meeting of EU leaders struggling to decide whether to target Russian oil in a new set of sanctions.