প্রকাশ: 09/06/2022
The battle for the
Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk is brutal and will determine the fate of the
Donbas region, said the country's president, as Russian troops lay waste to the
city in an assault aimed at controlling eastern Ukraine.
After failing to take control of the capital Kyiv, the
Kremlin says it is now seeking to completely "liberate" Ukraine's
breakaway Donbas where Russian-backed separatists broke away from Ukrainian
government control in 2014.
Around a third of the Donbas was held by the separatists
before the 24 Feb invasion.
"This is a very brutal battle, very tough, perhaps one
of the most difficult throughout this war," Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskiy said in a video statement on Wednesday.
"Sievierodonetsk remains the epicentre of the encounter
in Donbas ... Largely, that is where the fate of our Donbas is being decided
now," he added.
Ukrainian fighters in Sievierodonetsk pulled back to the
city's outskirts on Wednesday but have vowed to fight there for as long as
possible.
Artillery shelling has turned the city in Ukraine's Luhansk
province to a bombed-out wasteland. Luhansk's regional governor, Serhiy Gaidai,
said the centre of the town was being destroyed.
"Our fighters are hanging on in the Sievierodonetsk
industrial zone. But fighting is going on not just in the industrial zone, but
right in the city of Sievierodonetsk," Gaidai told Ukrainian television
late on Wednesday.
Ukrainian forces still control all of Sievierodonetsk's
smaller twin city Lysychansk on the west bank of the Siverskyi Donets River but
Russian forces were destroying residential buildings there, Gaidai said.
Reuters could not independently verify the situation on the
ground in either city.
Kyiv's ambassador to the United States told CNN that
Ukrainian troops were vastly outnumbered in Luhansk and Donetsk, which
collectively form the Donbas, a largely Russian-speaking region.
But "as we already saw in the battle for Kyiv, we can
lose something temporarily. Of course, we're trying to minimize that because we
know what (can) happen (when) Russians control territories, but we will get it
back," Oksana Markarova said.
Gaidai said Russia now controlled more than 98% of Luhansk.
'GOD SAVED ME'
West of Sievierodonetsk in Sloviansk, one of the main Donbas
cities in Ukrainian hands, women with small children lined up to collect aid on
Wednesday while other residents carried buckets of water across the city.
Most residents have fled but authorities say around 24,000
remain in the city, in the path of an expected assault by Russian forces
regrouping to the north.
Albina Petrovna, 85, described the moment her building was
caught in an attack, which left her windows shattered and her balcony
destroyed.
"Broken glass fell on me but God saved me, I have
scratches everywhere," she said.
Ukraine's military said four people were killed during
Russian shelling on around 20 towns in the Donbas over the past 24 hours, and
that its troops had killed 31 Russian soldiers. Reuters could not immediately
verify the figures.
In Soledar, Donetsk, residents took shelter in basements as
shells hit the town on Wednesday.
"We are shelled day and night. The shelling is ongoing.
We stay in the basement almost all the time. The apartment is close, we run
there during the day. During the night we stay here," said a resident, who
did not provide her name.
Another resident, 65-year-old Antonina, sobbed and asked,
"When is it going to end?"
Soledar is only 18 km (11 miles) from the town of Bakhmut,
which lies at the start of a crucial supply road to the cities of Lysychansk
and Sievierodonetsk.
Ukraine and the West accuse Russian troops of targeting
civilians and war crimes, charges Moscow rejects.
Moscow says it is engaged in a "special military
operation" to disarm and "denazify" its neighbour. Ukraine and
its allies say Moscow has launched an unprovoked war of aggression, killing
thousands of civilians and flattening cities.
United Nations figures show more than 7 million people have
crossed the border from Ukraine since Russia invaded on 24 Feb.
GRAIN SCARE
Ukraine is one of the world's biggest grain exporters, and
Western countries accuse Russia of creating a risk of global famine by blockading
Ukraine's Black Sea and Azov Sea ports. Moscow says Western sanctions are
responsible for food shortages.
Turkey has been trying to broker negotiations to open up
Ukraine's Black Sea ports. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu hosted Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday and said a UN-backed deal on the
ports was possible with further talks.
Lavrov said the Ukrainian ports could be opened, but Ukraine
would have to de-mine them first. Ukraine dismissed Russia's assurances as
"empty words" and said Russian attacks on farmland and agricultural
sites were exacerbating the crisis.
Vitaliy Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv region, where Russian
shelling destroyed the warehouses of one of Ukraine's largest agricultural
commodities terminals over the weekend, told Reuters Moscow was trying to scare
the world into meeting its terms.
The Kremlin cited Russian President Vladimir Putin as saying
Western sanctions must be lifted for Russian grain to reach markets.
Zelenskiy told a Yale University summit of business leaders
by video link on Wednesday that he believes Russia will not seek a diplomatic
end to the war unless the world supports Ukrainian troops in their fight.
"We are an independent, righteous, normal
country," Zelenskiy said, adding about his troops' war efforts: "We
do it on our land and we slowly push them back. That's how we're going to keep
on moving."
- Reuters
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