Damaged residential buildings in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, on May 22. PAVEL KLIMOV / Reuters
Russian forces on Tuesday launched a total assault to encircle Ukrainian troops in twin cities east of a river, a battle that could determine the success or failure of Moscow’s main campaign in the industrial heart of the Donbas .
Russia is trying to seize the two provinces of the Donbas, claimed by the separatists, Donetsk and Luhansk, and trap Ukrainian forces in a pocket on the main eastern front.
Russian forces have taken control of three cities in the Donetsk region, including Svitlodarsk, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told a local branch of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.
“The situation on the (east) front is extremely difficult because the fate of this country may be being decided (there) right now,” said Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk.
The easternmost part of the pocket of the Ukraine-controlled Donbas, the city of Sievierodonetsk on the east bank of the Siverskiy Donets River and its twin Lysychansk on the west bank, have become the main battlefield. Russian forces were advancing from three directions to encircle them.
“The enemy has focused its efforts on carrying out an offensive to encircle Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk,” said Serhiy Gaidai, governor of Luhansk province, where the two cities are among the last remaining territories in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military says it had repulsed nine Russian attacks on the Donbas on Tuesday, in which Moscow troops had killed at least 14 civilians, using planes, rocket launchers, artillery, tanks, mortars and missiles.
Reuters could not immediately verify the information.
As a sign of Ukraine’s success elsewhere, authorities in its second largest city, Kharkiv, reopened the underground subway, where thousands of civilians had taken refuge for months under relentless bombing.
The move came after Ukraine expelled Russian forces from much of the northern city’s artillery camp, as they did from the capital Kyiv in March.
MURAT YUKSELIR / THE BALLOON AND THE MAIL, SOURCE: GRAPHIC NEWS
Three months after the invasion, Moscow still has limited gains to show its worst military losses in decades, while much of Ukraine has suffered devastation in the largest attack on a European state since 1945.
More than 6.5 million people have fled abroad, thousands have died and cities have been reduced to rubble.
The war has also led to growing food shortages and rising prices due to sanctions and disruptions in supply chains. Both Ukraine and Russia are major exporters of grain and other commodities.
The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, accused Russia of using the food supply as a weapon.
“In the Russian-occupied Ukraine, the Kremlin army is confiscating stocks of grain and machinery (…) and Russian warships in the Black Sea are blocking Ukrainian ships full of wheat and sunflower seeds.” said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. .
Financial billionaire George Soros, also speaking in Davos, said the Russian invasion of Ukraine could have marked the start of World War III.
“The best and perhaps only way to preserve our civilization is to defeat Putin as soon as possible,” he said.
Underlining the global tensions triggered by the war, Japan, a key ally of the United States in Asia, on Tuesday flew Russian and Chinese warplanes near its airspace during a visit to Tokyo by US President Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, to an extent that could bring Moscow closer to the limit of default, the Biden administration announced it would not extend an exemption that would expire on Wednesday that would allow Russia to pay U.S. bonds.
Moscow had been allowed to continue paying interest and principal and avoid defaulting on its public debt.
Comments from senior Russian officials on Tuesday also suggested plans for a protracted conflict ahead of time.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia was slowly moving forward deliberately to avoid civilian casualties. Nikolai Patrushev, head of Putin’s security council, said Moscow would fight for the time needed to eradicate “Nazism” in Ukraine, a justification for the war that the West calls baseless.
In Kharkiv, hundreds of people were still living underground in trains and stations when authorities asked them to stop on Tuesday.
“Everyone is afraid of madness, because there are still bombings, rocket attacks have not stopped,” said Nataliia Lopanska, who had lived on a subway train for most of the war.
The Donbas fighting follows Russia’s biggest victory in months: the surrender last week of the Ukrainian garrison in the port of Mariupol after a siege in which Kyiv believes tens of thousands of civilians were killed.
Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to the Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol now operating outside the Russian-controlled city, said the dead were still being found among the rubble.
About 200 rotting bodies were buried in rubble in the basement of a tall building, he said. The locals had refused to pick them up and the Russian authorities had left the place, leaving a stench all over the district.
Highlighting the obstacles to a diplomatic resolution of the conflict, a new poll on Tuesday showed that 82% of Ukrainians believe their country should not give up any territory as part of a peace deal with Russia.
In Russia, where criticism of the so-called “special operation” is banned and the independent media shut down, jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny used a court appearance for a video link to a prison colony for denounce the “stupid war that your Putin started.” ”
“A madman has put his claws in Ukraine and I don’t know what he wants to do: this crazy thief,” he said.
Ukraine’s Donbas industrial region, the focus of recent Russian offensives, has been destroyed, said President Volodymyr Zelensky, while some of the richest countries in the world pledged to bolster Kyiv with billions of dollars.
Reuters
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