Local authorities said the situation in this major eastern city “is extremely difficult”
FILE PHOTO: Local resident Viacheslav walks on the rubble of a residential building damaged by a military strike, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Severodonetsk, Luhansk region, Ukraine April 16, 2022. REUTERS/Serhii Nuzhnenko
The Russian Army plans to carry out a “cleansing operation” in and around Severodonetsk, in the eastern Lugansk region, to eliminate or neutralize any enemies in that area. area that you are about to fully control.
Serhii Haidai, head of the Lugansk regional military administration, explained on Tuesday that the situation in this city, the second most important that the Russians still do not fully control in the Lugansk region, “is extremely difficult”.
“On the morning of May 31 it became known that the Russian invaders plan to carry out a mopping-up operation around Severodonetsk, in the Lugansk region”, the military official wrote on social media, according to local Ukrainian agencies.
The Russian Army “has deployed a battalion of soldiers there, who will comb the villages on the outskirts of Severodonetsk, are gathering their equipment”, he specified.
The Russian offensive in Severodonetsk
The Russians “are sending a battalion of soldiers who will pass through the surrounding villages. They are moving teams with big flamethrowers to just burn our army, along with the civilian population, they don’t care,” Haidai denounced.
Great part of Severodonetsk is already controlled by Russian troops, although “the occupiers cannot move freely around the city due to the fact that Ukrainian troops remain” in some posts.
“The situation in our city remains extremely difficult. In Severodonetsk, unfortunately, part of the city is already controlled by the Russian army. A couple of days ago they reported that the city had already been captured, but that was not the case,” said the military official in statements to local television broadcast by the Ukrinform agency.
Severodonetsk, with a pre-war population of 100,000, is one of several major urban centers standing in Russia’s way of capturing the entire Luhansk region b> and the administrative center of eastern Ukraine, Kramatorsk.
A destroyed building in Severodonetsk
“Our men they are there (in Severodonetsk), they are repelling the (Russian) attacks. That is, they (the Russians) cannot move freely there,” Haidai reiterated.
He added that the entire Lugansk region controlled by Ukraine is being completely bombed, although the attacks are not being entirely successful in areas such as Zolote, Toshkivka and Lysychansk, where there is still resistance.
The regional road between Lysychansk-Bakhmut, an important road in the area, is not yet controlled by the Russian army either , but it is being heavily bombed, he pointed out.
Since Monday, the clashes between Russian and Ukrainian troops have been taking place street by street, according to Ukrainian military officials.
A Russian Ka-52 “Alligator” flies during the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in the city of Popasna in the Luhansk region, Ukraine, on May 26, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko
The military offensive ordered by Moscow focuses on the last days in occupying the regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, which make up Donbas, an area bordering Russia and in which pro-Russian guerrillas are active and are supported by the Kremlin.
Control of this area of eastern Ukraine would allow Russia to have a corridor to move its troops and materials to the south, in the Crimean peninsula, which it has occupied since 2014.
(With information from EFE and AFP)