Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Russian forces on Friday struck Ukraine’s last strongholds in a separatist-controlled eastern Ukrainian province, including a city where authorities say 1,500 people were killed and 60 percent of residential buildings destroyed since the beginning of the war. .
Ukraine’s foreign minister warned that without a new injection of foreign weapons, Ukrainian forces could not prevent Russia from seizing Sievierodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk, locations that are crucial to Russia’s goal. to capture the entire Donbass industrial region of Ukraine.
The cities are the last areas under Ukrainian control in Luhansk, one of the two provinces that make up the region. Russian forces have made slow but persistent advances as they bombed and attempted to encircle both Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk.
“Russians are hitting residential neighborhoods relentlessly,” Regional Governor Serhiy Haidai wrote on Friday in a Telegram post. “The people of Sievierodonetsk have forgotten when it was the last time the city was silent for at least half an hour.”
Russian bombings have killed four people in the city over the past 24 hours, he said.
Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk said on Thursday afternoon that at least 1,500 people had been killed in Sievierodonetsk since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. Between 12,000 and 13,000 remain in the city, below a pre-war population of about 100,000, and 60% of the residential population. buildings have been destroyed, he said.
Stryuk said a Russian reconnaissance and sabotage group entered a city hotel and that the main road between neighboring Lysychansk and the southwestern city of Bakhmut remains open, but traveling is dangerous. He said only 12 people could be evacuated on Thursday.
In Donetsk, the other province in the Donbas region, Russian-backed rebels claimed control of Lyman, a large railway hub north of two other key cities that remained under Ukrainian control, on Friday. There was no immediate confirmation from Ukrainian officials.
With Ukraine’s hopes of halting the Russian advance, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, called on Western nations to provide his country with more weapons so that its defenders could be equipped to “push ( Russian forces) “.
“We need heavy weapons. The only position where Russia is better than us is the amount of heavy weapons they have. Without artillery, without multiple rocket launch systems we will not be able to push them back,” Kuleba said in a video. posted to Twitter Thursday night.
He said the situation in the east was “even worse than people say. … If you really care about Ukraine, guns, guns and guns again.”
In his nightly speech to the nation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said harsh words to the European Union, which has not agreed to a sixth round of sanctions including a embargo on Russian oil.
“Of course, I am grateful to our friends who are promoting new sanctions,” the Ukrainian leader said. “But where did those who blocked the sixth package get so much power? Why are they still allowed to have so much power, even in intra-European proceedings?
Zelenskyy said Russia’s offensive on the Donbas could leave its communities in ashes and uninhabitable. He accused Moscow of pursuing “an obvious policy of genocide” through mass deportations and killings of civilians.
Russian bombings in Kharkiv, a northeastern city that has been under assault while Ukrainian forces keep invading troops out, killed nine people, including a father and his 5-month-old baby, the president said. .
Associated Press reporters saw the bodies of at least two men dead and four wounded at a central subway station, where the victims were transported as the bombing continued outside.
Zelenskyy also spoke without wheels of what is at stake in the battle for eastern Ukraine.
“The pressure on Russia is literally a matter of saving lives,” he said. “And every day of delay, weakness, various disputes or proposals to ‘appease’ the aggressor at the expense of the victim are new Ukrainians killed. And new threats for everyone on our continent. “
Moscow on Thursday urged the West to lift war sanctions, seeking to shift the blame for a growing global food crisis that has been exacerbated by Kyiv’s inability to ship millions of tons of grain and other agricultural products while it was in power. under attack.
Britain immediately accused Russia of “trying to keep the world afloat”, insisting there would be no easing of sanctions, and a senior US diplomat criticized “pure barbarism, sadistic cruelty and illegality”. of the invasion.
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Becatoros reported from Kramatorsk, Ukraine. Associated Press writers Andres Rosa in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed.
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