Fighting intensified over the weekend over Lysychansk, Ukraine’s last major stronghold in the strategic eastern Luhansk province, and an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy admitted the city could fall.
Russian forces seized the sister city of Lysychansk, Sievierodonetsk, on the opposite side of the Siverskiy Donets River, last month, after some of the toughest fighting in the war.
Rodion Miroshnik, Russia’s ambassador to the self-proclaimed pro-Moscow Lugansk People’s Republic, told Russian television: “Lysishansk has been controlled,” but added, “Unfortunately, he has not yet been released.”
Read more: Russian forces press assault on Luhansk province in eastern Ukraine
Russian media showed a video of the Luhansk militia marching through the streets of Lysychansk waving flags and cheering, but Ukrainian National Guard spokesman Ruslan Muzychuk told Ukrainian television that the city remained in the hands of Ukraine.
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“Now there are fierce battles near Lysychansk, but fortunately the city is not surrounded and is under the control of the Ukrainian army,” Muzychuk said.
Zelenskiy’s adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said Russian forces had finally crossed the Siverskiy Donets River and were approaching the city from the north.
“That’s really a threat. We’ll see. I don’t rule out any of a series of results here. Things will be much clearer in a day or two,” he said.
“If Lysychansk is taken, it will strategically be more difficult for the Russians to continue their offensive. The front lines will be flatter and there will be more frontal attack than from the flanks.”
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He said the Russians should focus on taking six big cities in the industrialized region of eastern Donbas and that with each their forces would be increasingly dispersed.
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“The more Western weapons reach the front, the more the landscape changes in favor of Ukraine,” he said.
Ukraine has repeatedly called for more weapons in the West, saying its forces are far outnumbered.
Elsewhere, Oleksandr Senkevych, mayor of Mykolaiv, bordering the vital Black Sea port of Odessa, reported powerful explosions in the city on Saturday.
“Stay in the shelters!” he wrote in the Telegram messaging app while the sirens of the airstrikes sounded.
2:21 Russia accused of civilian bombing campaign and climbing assaults in Ukraine Russia accused of civilian bombing campaign and climbing assaults in Ukraine
The cause of the blasts was not immediately clear, although Russia later said it had hit the army command posts.
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Reuters was unable to independently verify battlefield reports.
Ukrainian authorities said on Friday that a missile crashed into an apartment block near Odessa and killed at least 21 people. A shopping center was hit Monday in the central city of Kremenchuk and killed at least 19 people.
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Zelenskiy denounced the attacks on Friday as “conscious and deliberately targeted Russian terrorist and not any kind of mistake or accidental missile attack.”
“VERY DIFFICULT WAY”
In his televised speech on Saturday, Zelenskiy said it would be a “very difficult path” to victory, but the Ukrainians must maintain their determination and inflict losses on the “aggressor … so that all Russians remember that Ukraine cannot be broken. “
Kyiv says Moscow has intensified missile attacks on cities far from major eastern battlefields and has deliberately hit civilian sites. Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops on the eastern front lines describe intense artillery attacks on residential areas.
Thousands of civilians have been killed and cities razed since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated Russia’s denials aimed at civilians.
Russia is trying to expel Ukrainian forces from Luhansk and Donetsk provinces to Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting in Kyiv since Russia’s first military intervention in Ukraine in 2014.
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Troops on a break from fighting and speaking in Konstyantynivka, a market town about 115 km (72 miles) west of Lysychansk, said they had managed to keep the supply road open in the stormed city for the time being. despite the Russian bombing.
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“We still use the road because we have to, but it’s within reach of Russian artillery,” one soldier said as comrades relaxed nearby, eating sandwiches or eating ice cream.
“The Russian tactic right now is to bomb any building where we could be located. When they have destroyed it, they move on to the next one,” he said.
Reuters reporters saw an unexploded missile embedded in the ground in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of the city of Kramatorsk, Donbas, on Saturday evening.
1:50 Russia about to control the key Ukrainian Bastion of Sievierodonetsk Russia on the verge of controlling the key Ukrainian Bastion of Sievierodonetsk – June 13, 2022
The missile fell in a wooded area between blocks of residential towers. The outgoing artillery fire and several large explosions were heard in the center of Kramatorsk in the early evening.
Despite being mistreated in the east, Ukrainian forces have made some advances elsewhere, such as forcing Russia to withdraw from Snake Island, an outcrop of the Black Sea southeast of Odessa that Moscow captured at the start of the war.
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Russia had used Snake Island to impose a blockade on Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain exporters and a major producer of seeds for vegetable oils. The disruptions have helped fuel rising world prices for cereals and food.
Russia, also a major grain producer, blames the crisis on Western sanctions that hurt its exports. (Reuters office reports; written by Lincoln Feast, Edmund Blair, Ron Popeski and David Brunnstrom;)