Battle for Ukraine’s Sievierodonetsk rages on city streets

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Kyiv (AP) — Ukrainian and Russian troops fought street by street for control of the industrial city of Sievierodonetsk on Monday in a pivotal battle of the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

It was unclear which side had the upper hand, with “the situation changing from hour to hour,” Oleksandr Stryuk, head of administration in Sievierodonetsk, said on television.

The city has become the main target of Russia’s offensive in Donbas, which encompasses Lugansk and Donetsk provinces, as the Kremlin invasion continues in a war of attrition that has seen cities flattened by artillery shelling.

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Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russia was dropping troops and equipment in its campaign to capture Ukraine’s largest remaining city of Luhansk.

The province’s governor, Serhiy Gaidai, said on Monday the situation had worsened after Ukrainian defenders pushed the Russians back over the weekend when they appeared close to victory.

President Volodomyr Zelenskiy told a news conference later in the capital Kyiv that the situation was “difficult in the east.”

He added: “We are in control of the situation, there are more (Russians), they are more powerful, but we have every chance to fight. If there is a (Russian) breakthrough in Donbas, it will be very difficult.”

Stryuk said street fighting was in full swing and neither side was preparing to withdraw. Both sides say they have inflicted heavy casualties on each other.

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In its overnight update, the Ukrainian military said two civilians were killed in Russian shelling in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on Monday and that Russian forces had fired on more than 20 communities.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the battlefield reports. Russia denies targeting civilians in the conflict.

Russia says it is on a mission to “liberate” Donbas, partly controlled by separatist Moscow proxies since 2014, after Ukrainian forces expelled its troops from the capital Kyiv and Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv. in the early stages of the war.

Zelenskiy sought to rally his troops on Sunday with a visit to two towns near the front lines.

“What you all deserve is victory, that’s the most important thing. But not at any cost,” Zelenskiy said in a video.

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He said he had traveled to Lysychansk, south of Sievierodonetsk, and Soledar, rare outings for him outside of Kyiv since the Russian invasion began on February 24.

Russia calls its action in Ukraine a “special military operation” to crack down on what it sees as threats to its security. Ukraine and its Western allies dismiss this as nonsense, saying Russia is an unprovoked war to seize territory that risks escalating into a wider European conflict.

PUTIN WARNING

In a coordinated move with the United States, Britain said it would supply Ukraine with multiple launch rocket systems that can hit targets up to 80 km (50 miles) away, providing the more precise long-range firepower needed to hit Russian artillery batteries. , a key component of Moscow’s battle plans.

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Zelenskiy said that Kyiv was gradually receiving “specific anti-ship systems” and that this would be the best way to end the Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports that prevent grain exports.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would respond to Western deliveries of long-range weapons by pushing Ukrainian forces further from the Russian border.

On Sunday, President Vladimir Putin said Russia would attack new targets if the West supplied longer-range missiles. On the same day, Russian missiles hit Kyiv for the first time in more than a month.

DESTROY TANKS

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russian forces were also advancing towards Sloviansk, which is about 85 kilometers (53 miles) west of Sievierodonetsk.

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Some 60 kilometers (40 miles) to the south, on the front line near Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers said the situation was difficult but they had no choice but to push the Russians back.

A unit commander who identified himself as Maxym asked Ukraine’s allies for more weapons.

“With more anti-tank weapons we could destroy their tanks, do maximum damage and the enemy will be forced to run from where they came from,” he told Reuters. “…We will fight for every piece of this land.”

Russian forces were strengthening their positions in the Kharkiv region and shelling Ukrainian positions to hold the territory they had occupied, Ukraine’s military general staff said.

Western countries have imposed sanctions of unprecedented scope and severity on Russia for its invasion.

On Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it had imposed personal sanctions on 61 US officials, including the Treasury and Energy secretaries and top defense and media executives. The move, he said, was in retaliation for the “steady expansion of US sanctions.”

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets, Pavel Polityuk, Lidia Kelly, and Ronald Popeski, Writing by Angus MacSwan and Mark Heinrich, Editing by Philippa Fletcher and John Stonestreet)