Russian troops advance in their goal of conquering the industrial region of Donbas. They already control more than half of the city on the banks of the Donets River. All humanitarian corridors are suspended.
By
Gustavo Sierra
Two women from Sverodonetsk watch the passing of Russian helicopters heading towards the center of the city where there is house-to-house fighting. (Reuters)
The urban combat is harrowing. The enemy is so close you can see them in the eye.Shooting from one sidewalk to the other is to know who is being killed. This is what is happening right now in the streets of Severodonetsk, a city of 120,000 inhabitants on the banks of the Siverskyi Donets River, in Eastern Ukraine, where the fate of the entire Luhansk province is at stake and it is key to closing the circle of the pearl that Vladimir Putin covets so much: the rich region of Donbas, the most important coal and industrial center in Eastern Europe.
“Half of the city was captured by the Russians and fierce street fighting is taking place,”Desperate Mayor Oleksandr Striuk told Ukrainian national television. “The situation is very serious and the city is essentially being ruthlessly destroyed block by block.”
While Striuk was talking on his satellite phone, he could hear in the background the permanent rumble of the Russian artillery that has been constantly shelling the city center since last Saturday. It was already known that this would be the next target of the Russians and the vast majority of the inhabitants of Severodonetsk had fled, but some 15,000 civilians remain trapped in the shelters and buildings on the outskirts. And as we know, these are the most unprotected, those who lack the resources to escape, the disabled or elderly and those who do not dare to leave their place in the world. They are under bombs and within range of Russian soldiers advancing meter by meter.
A Russian tank entering Severodonetsk. In the center of this city of 120,000 inhabitants, street-by-street fighting is taking place for control of this industrial region on the banks of the Dniper River. (Reuters)
The governor of the Luhansk region, Sergiy Gaidai, is already preparing for the worst. He said that the Ukrainian troops defending the city could retreat across the Donets River to the city of Lysychansk , which is located on the west bank, to escape the encirclement. Capturing these twin cities would give Moscow effective control of Luhansk and allow the Kremlin to declare some form of victory after more than three months of war.
Russian artillery is pounding non-stop and advancing from three points in a pincer operation that could only have been thwarted if the US had delivered the multiple missile launch systems (MLRS) it had promised. President Joe Biden announced yesterday that he would not send this weapon because it has a range of up to 200 kilometers and this would give Ukraine the possibility of attacking positions beyond the borders. “We’re not going to send rocket systems to Ukraine that can hit Russia,” Biden told White House-accredited reporters after spending the long weekend at his private home in Delaware. He assured that other rocket and missile launch systems will arrive, but with a shorter range.
The itch that Washington is having to assist Ukraine so as not to provide any weapons “offensive” and make sure that it only helps in “defense”, it does not stop Vladimir Putin which is amassing on the other side of the border, there some 200 kilometers from Sievierodonetsk, a large number of additional troops and weapons in the Kursk region. The Russian independent media outlet Meduza reported, citing regional governor Roman Starovoit, that he was concentrating in that area “a powerful artillery force to finish conquering Donbas”.
Russian soldiers advance across the region of the Donbas that is the most coveted pearl by Vladimir Putin. (Reuters)
“The liberation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, recognized by the Russian Federation as independent states, is an unconditional priority”, assured the veteran Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
Meanwhile, in the historic center of Severodonetsk the humanitarian situation is desperate. “It’s the new Mariupol,” said Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council, referring to the city taken over by the Russians after nearly three months of bombing. “It breaks my heart,” Egeland said in an interview with the New York Times. “It is really a war against the elders.They are the ones who stayed there.” And he called for a humanitarian ceasefire to allow evacuations and resupply of aid.
Ukrainian forces on Monday halted attempts to evacuate civilians along a road leading to the city of Bakhmut, after the French journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, of the BFMTV network, died when the armored bus he was traveling in was hit by shrapnel from a Russian shell.
A local resident walks past a building destroyed by a Russian military strike, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in the city of Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine. REUTERS/Serhii Nuzhnenko
According to analysis by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russia gained the upper hand in its effort to take the city by concentrating its forces in the region. In this way, he may be beginning to correct a mistake made at the start of the invasion in February, when the dispersal of his forces across the country contributed to Moscow’s failure to capture Kyiv and the country’s second largest city, Kharkiv. /p>
“The Kremlin has considered that cannot afford to waste time and that it must seize the last opportunity to expand the territory controlled by the separatists, since the arrival of Western weapons in Ukraine could make it impossible”, he commented. Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov, quoted by The Associated Press.
On the ground, in the reality of human beings in the midst of combat, calculations of time are measured in terms of survival. This is what is happening in Sievierodonetsk according to Mayor Oleksandr Striuk: “Civilians are dying from direct hits by soldiers’ shrapnel, from fragmentation wounds and under the rubble of destroyed buildings, as most of the the inhabitants hide in cellars and shelters”. The electricity is cut off and people need water, food and medicine, the mayor said: “There is food for several more days, but the question is how to distribute it.”