Invading artillery shelling has flattened critical infrastructure and damaged 90% of buildings. Power and communications have been cut off in a town once home to 100,000 people
Ukrainian military inspect an MT-LB in the Kharkiv area of eastern Ukraine, Sunday, May 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Russian troops pushed deeper into a key city in eastern Ukraine and fought street-to-street with Kyiv’s forces on Monday in a battle that the mayor said left the city “completely ruined” and drove tens of thousands from their homes.
Military analysts have described the battle as part of a race against time for the Kremlin, which has said it wants to complete its capture of the Donbas industrial region before more Western weapons arrive to bolster Ukraine’s defenses. Western weapons have already helped kyiv’s forces thwart a Russian advance on the capital in the first weeks of the war. That failure forced Moscow to withdraw, regroup and pursue a more limited goal of seizing Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists already controlled swathes of territory and have been fighting Ukrainian troops for eight years.
Ukrainian servicemen park a Russian BMP-2, an infantry fighting vehicle, in the Kharkiv area of eastern Ukraine, Sunday, May 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
In recent days, the fighting has focused on Severodonetskin a battle that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called“unspeakably difficult”. Relentless Russian artillery shelling has destroyed critical infrastructure and damaged 90% of buildings, and power and communications have been largely cut off in a city once home to 100,000 people.< /p>
“The number of victims is increasing every hour, but we cannot count the dead and wounded in the midst of street clashes”, Mayor Oleksandr Striuk told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, adding that Moscow troops advanced a few more blocks into the city center.
The Ukrainian military has been recovering abandoned Russian combat vehicles on the front lines to repair them and use them for their purposes. advantage. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
“The city has been completely ruined,” he added, with only 12,000 to 13,000 residents left, sheltering in basements and bunkers to escape Russian bombardment, a a situation reminiscent of the siege of Mariupol that trapped residents and caused some of the worst suffering of the war.
While tens of thousands are believed to have died in Mariupol, Striuk estimated that 1,500 civilians have been killed in their city since the war began, due to Russian attacks and dire conditions, including a lack of medicine or medical treatment.
A man attends a street concert during the Kyiv Day celebrations in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sunday, May 29, 2022. The Ukrainian capital celebrates the anniversary of its founding every last Sunday of May. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
The Ukrainian military said Russian forces reinforced their positions on the northeastern and southeastern outskirts of Severodonetsk, 145 kilometers (90 miles) south of the Russian border in a area that is the last focus of control of the Ukrainian government in the Luhansk province.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said the Russians were also moving towards nearby Lysychansk. He said two civilians were killed and five others wounded in the latest Russian bombardment. Severodonetsk and Lysychansk are located on both sides of the strategically important Siverskiy Donetsk River.
In this photo provided by the Presidential Press Office of Ukraine on Sunday, May 29, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, center, inspects damaged buildings, as he visits the war-hit Kharkiv region. Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the situation in the east as “indescribably difficult”. The “Russian army is trying to get at least some result” by concentrating his attacks there, he said in a video address Saturday night. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
The Russian advance on Severodonetsk and Lysychansk is part of an all-out drive, executed without regard to losses of personnel and equipment, said Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov.
“It gives the impression that Russia has set itself the goal of seizing Donbas at all costs,” Zhdanov said. “The arrival of Western weapons in Ukraine could make it impossible.”
An elderly patient waits on a stretcher to board a medical evacuation train operated by MSF (Doctors Without Borders) at the train station in Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine, Sunday, May 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco) < p class=”paragraph”>The Ukrainians hope they can hold off the Russians long enough for them to run out of power, or for more Western weapons to arrive. But Mykola Sunhurovskyi, a military expert from the kyiv-based Razumkov Center think-tank said they are taking a long time to arrive, as the Russians have a chance.
Russian pressure it also continued in the south on Monday. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said an artillery strike on a shipyard in the southern port of Mykolaiv destroyed Ukrainian armored vehicles stationed there.
The train is specially equipped and has with medical personnel, transporting patients from overwhelmed hospitals near the front lines to medical facilities in western Ukraine, far from the fighting. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
In the Kherson region, the deputy head of the Russian-installed regional administration, Kirill Stremousov, told the Russian state news agency Tass that grain from last year’s harvest is being delivered to Russian buyers, adding that “obviously there are lots of grain here. “Ukraine has accused Russia of looting grain from territories its forces control, and the US has argued that Moscow is jeopardizing the world’s food supply by preventing Ukraine from exporting its harvest”< /b>.
Zelensky was scheduled to address a meeting of European Union leaders later Monday as they sought to show solidarity with Ukraine despite divisions over whether to target on Russian oil in a new series of sanctions. The Ukrainian leader has repeatedly demanded that the EU target Russia’s lucrative energy sector and deprive Moscow of billions of dollars each day in supply payments.
(with AP information)