LYSYCHANSK, Ukraine – With Russia about to encircle Sievierodonetsk, a city critical of its goal of seizing eastern Ukraine, and with a neighboring city in sight of Moscow, the question of how the realities on the ground they will shape the next phase of the war stood still. most urgent Sunday for Western allies in Ukraine.
“The Russians are doing everything possible to cut off Sievierodonetsk,” regional governor Serhiy Haidai told the Telegram on Sunday, the messaging application. “The next two or three days will be important.”
On the other side of the river, the Ukrainians trying to hold the Russians in Lysychansk had the advantage of good ground, but with dwindling armaments to defend it.
“If there is no help with military equipment, we will be expelled,” said Oleksandr Voronenko, 46, a military police officer stationed in Lysychansk. “Because every day the team is destroyed. You need to replace it with something new. “
Sievierodonetsk Sunday. The city is almost surrounded, an official said. Credit … Tyler Hicks / The New York Times
Ukrainian officials have pleaded with NATO allies for faster delivery of long-range weapons and the urgent replenishment of even more basic supplies, including ammunition.
But with the momentum of the war shifting more decisively in favor of Russia, Ukraine’s allies, their threatened economies and their determined determination, they will soon be forced to face far more fundamental issues than what kind of weapons to provide, including pressure on Ukraine to reach a peace deal with Russia or risk Russian escalation with more aggressive military support.
“There was always the feeling that when the center of gravity shifted south and east, there would be the possibility of more Russian gains based on greater mass and its existing land acquisitions,” Ian Lesser said. , a former U.S. official who heads it. the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund.
“But it raises more serious long-term questions about the nature of the conflict, Ukraine’s goals and Western goals in relation to them,” he said.
While the Ukrainians are waiting, they are suffering horrific losses in the Donbas region, where the struggle for Sievierodonetsk is taking place. According to Ukraine’s own assessment, it is losing between 100 and 200 people a day as the bloodshed there worsens, partly because of Russian material superiority and partly because of Ukraine’s determination to continue fighting despite the increasingly bleak in the east.
A funeral in Bucha on Saturday for a soldier killed by a Russian sniper. Ukraine is losing up to 200 soldiers a day, officials estimate. Credit … Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Western supplies that have reached the front line are neither as plentiful nor as sophisticated as Ukraine would like. And some do not even get into battle, hit by Russian attacks before they can be deployed.
At the last minute on Saturday, Russian missiles hit a military warehouse in western Ukraine, injuring about two dozen people and, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry, destroying the anti-tank and anti-aircraft missile systems supplied to Ukraine by United States and the European Union.
The Ukrainian government has invested troops and resources in its effort to cling to Sievierodonetsk, a strategically important industrial city and the last major urban center in the Donbas region of Luhansk that has not yet collapsed. Russian forces have destroyed two bridges leading to central Sievierodonetsk and bombed the rest, a major supply line for Ukrainian forces, the regional governor said.
Now the battle may be about to shift to its sister city, Lysychansk.
On Sunday, from the top of a hill in Lysychansk, it became clear why the focal point of the Russian offensive seems easier to defend than other parts of the Donbass: it is on high ground. The vast plains of the region are rich in natural resources, but the elevation is a rarity.
This leaves the Ukrainian defenders of the city in an advantageous position.
Ukrainian soldiers bathing in a stream on Sunday in the Donetsk region. Credit … Tyler Hicks / The New York Times
But it is impossible to defend Lysychansk, a city with a population of about 100,000 before the war, without the supplies needed to keep Ukrainian tanks and artillery stocked with shells and the thousands of troops garrisoned there fed and equipped. .
This is the challenge facing the Ukrainian army now that Russian forces are nearing the end of their campaign to seize neighboring Sievierodonetsk. Even with Sievierodonetsk captured, Ukrainian troops could probably defend Lysychansk, in part because the Seversky Donets River separates the two cities, unless Russian forces manage to cut off the city’s supply routes.
On Sunday it was clear that the Russians were trying to achieve this by constantly advancing from the southeast.
Smoky plumes and flaming fields where artillery attacks had lit the ground on fire engulfed Lysychansk in a semicircle on Sunday afternoon. Frequent inbound and outbound fireworks echoed throughout the city as civilians dragged empty bottles to fill them from a water tanker ship in the fire department equipped with clean water filters.
Last week, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that “in many respects, the fate of our Donbas is being decided” around Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk. But now the first city is virtually surrounded, and if Russian forces continue to move towards the mixture of asphalt and rugged roads that serve as the only logistics pipeline in the second, Ukrainian officials will have to make a strategic decision: withdraw or risking a Lysychansk encirclement, too.
We celebrate Orthodox Pentecost on Sunday at the Cathedral of the Golden Dome of St. Michael in Kyiv. Credit … Nicole Tung for The New York Times
“We are waiting for reinforcements,” said Mr Voronenko, a military police officer, as a group of about 20 residents began moving towards evacuation vans. “Part of it has come in the last few days in the form of artillery. And if we get more, we’ll probably be able to hold them back.”
But almost four months after Russia invaded, the Ukrainian army is running out of ammunition for its Soviet-era artillery and is not receiving enough ammunition, fast enough, leaving Lysychansk’s fate even more uncertain.
For European countries, the question of how to defend Ukraine is now both tactical and political, and raises issues closer to home.
Several EU members worry about sending too much ammunition of their own to Ukraine and are lagging behind in replenishing their arsenals. With the bloc’s foreign policy and defense not integrated, European leaders have been forced to try to stock up on their own military supplies.
A Ukrainian soldier says goodbye to his family in Kyiv on Sunday before deploying to the front. Credit … Nicole Tung for The New York Times
EU officials say they will try to seize a nine-billion-euro ($ 9.5 billion) funding package to jointly acquire military equipment, trying to alleviate concerns that military support to Ukraine has dangerously weakened defense capabilities. elsewhere in Europe.
The bloc is also struggling with the broader and more politically complicated issue of how to move forward with Ukraine’s bid to join the European Union. This decision could strengthen Mr Zelensky at home and perhaps give him more political flexibility to negotiate a ceasefire, but it could also lead Russia to dig deeper or worse.
During a visit to Kyiv on Saturday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said her administration would give an opinion on whether the bloc should grant candidate status to Ukraine by the end of the week. Ultimately, however, the decision is deeply political that EU leaders will be called to respond at a summit on 23 and 24 June in Brussels.
For most countries that are granted candidate status, it takes more than a decade of reforms and negotiations to become a full member of the EU.
If Ukraine is given the green light, the path to follow will be very difficult, given the terrible situation of the nation since the beginning of the war and the bad government and corruption that marked it even before the invasion.
Sunday sandbags at the entrance of a Kyiv subway station. About two million Ukrainians who fled after the invasion have returned, officials estimate. Credit … Nicole Tung for The New York Times
“Whatever the territorial reality on the ground, having this deeper perspective of Euro-Atlantic integration for Ukraine is very significant,” he said. Lesser, from the German Marshall Fund. “And as it fosters a growing prospect of an increasingly Westernized Ukraine versus a Russia that has become an Asian imperial stance, the political contrast between these two actors will become more pronounced.”
Thomas Gibbons-Neff reported from Lysychansk, and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels. Natalia Yermak contributed to the report from Lysychansk.