Russia launches ‘Battle of Donbas’ all-out assault on eastern Ukraine

LVIV/KYIV, April 19 (Reuters) – Russia launched its long-awaited all-out attack on eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, freeing thousands of troops in what Ukraine described as the Battle of Donbas, a campaign to seize two provinces and save a victory on the battlefield.

Ukrainian officials insisted their troops would resist the new assault, which they said began overnight with massive Russian artillery and rocket barrages and attempts to advance almost the entire stretch of the eastern front.

In the first reported success of Russia’s new attack, Ukraine said the Russians had taken Kreminna, a frontline city of 18,000 in Luhansk, one of two Donbas provinces.

“Kreminna is under the control of the ‘Orcs’. They have entered the city,” the province’s Ukrainian governor, Sergiy Gaidai, told a briefing, invoking the goblin-like creatures featured in fantasy books of JRR Tolkein.

Russian forces are attacking “from all sides”, authorities are trying to evacuate civilians and it is impossible to count civilian deaths, Gaidai said.

Moscow gave few details about its new campaign, but Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed that “another stage of this operation is beginning.” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the goal was to “liberate” Donetsk and Luhansk, provinces that Moscow is demanding Kyiv cede entirely to Russian-backed separatists.

In the ruins of Mariupol, a southeastern port destroyed while enduring a nearly eight-week siege, Russia gave the last Ukrainian defenders holed up in a giant steel factory an ultimatum to surrender before noon (0900 GMT) or die.

“All those who lay down their arms are guaranteed to stay alive,” the Defense Ministry said. Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin leader, whose forces have been fighting in Mariupol, predicted that troops would capture the plant on Tuesday.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Ukrainians in a video address overnight that they would resist the new advance.

“No matter how many Russian troops they send there, we will fight. We will defend ourselves,” he said.

Repulsed by Ukrainian forces in March from an assault on kyiv in the north, Russia has sent troops east to regroup for a ground offensive in the Donbas. It has also been launching long-distance attacks on other targets, including the capital.

EXPLOSIONS

Ukrainian media reported explosions, some powerful, along the front line in the Donetsk region, with shelling in Marinka, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

Explosions were also heard in Kharkiv in the northeast, Mykolaiv in the south and Zaporizhzhia in the southeast, while air raid sirens also sounded in major centers near the front line, officials and media said.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod province said Ukrainian forces attacked a border village, wounding three residents. read more

Ukraine’s top security official, Oleksiy Danilov, said Russian forces tried to break through Ukrainian defenses “along almost the entire front line of the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions.”

Coal- and steel-producing Donbas has been the focal point of Russia’s campaign to destabilize Ukraine since 2014, when the Kremlin used proxies to establish breakaway “people’s republics” in parts of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.

Moscow now says its goal is to capture all the provinces on behalf of the separatists. Ukraine has a large force defending the northern section of the Donbas, and military experts say Russia is likely aiming to cut off the Ukrainians or encircle them.

For its part, Ukraine has launched counterattacks near Kharkiv in the rear of Russia’s advance in recent days, apparently aimed at cutting off supply lines, a repeat of tactics that defeated Russia’s advance on kyiv last month.

Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces aimed to establish full control over the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson regions, while intensifying missile strikes in western Ukraine.

Zelenskiy’s office said at least eight people were killed and 13 wounded in shelling or fighting in the frontline cities and towns of Lugansk and Donetsk, including Kreminna, Popasna, Avdiivka, Maryinka, Toretsk, Vuhledar and Lymanske.

Oleh Sinegubov, governor of Kharkiv province, just north of Donbas, said five people were killed and 17 wounded in the last 24 hours there, from shelling and graduated missiles.

Zelenskiy adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said the new Russian offensive was doomed because Moscow simply did not have enough troops to overrun the defenses.

BIDEN TO KEEP THE CALL

Western countries and Ukraine accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of unprovoked aggression. The White House said US President Joe Biden, who has called Russia’s actions “genocide,” would hold a call with allies on Tuesday to discuss the crisis, including how to hold Russia accountable. read more

French President Emmanuel Macron said his dialogue with Putin had stalled after mass killings in Ukraine were discovered. read more

Russia denies targeting civilians in what it calls a special operation to demilitarize Ukraine. He has bombed cities to rubble and hundreds of civilian bodies have been found in towns where his forces have withdrawn. She says, without proof, that these and other examples of atrocities were staged.

Russia has been trying to take full control of the southeastern port city of Mariupol, which has been under siege since the first days of the war, site of the heaviest fighting and worst humanitarian catastrophe of the war.

Tens of thousands of residents have been trapped without access to food or water and bodies dumped in the streets. Ukraine believes that more than 20,000 civilians have been killed there. Capturing it would tie the pro-Russian breakaway territory to the Crimea region that Moscow annexed in 2014.

In the Russian-controlled districts reached by Reuters, shocked residents were cooking over open fires outside their damaged homes.

Major Serhiy Volyna, commander of the 36th Ukrainian Marine Brigade still fighting in Mariupol, asked Pope Francis for help in a letter.

“This is what hell on earth looks like… It’s time (for) help not only with prayers. Save our lives from satanic hands,” he said in the letter, according to excerpts Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican released. On twitter.

Information from Reuters journalists in kyiv and Lviv; Additional reporting from Lidia Kelly in Melbourne, Ronald Popeski in Winnipeg, and Reuters offices around the world; Written by Lincoln Feast, Robert Birsel, Peter Graff; Edited by Himani Sarkar and Gareth Jones

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