Kyiv, Ukraine –
Russia attacked the Ukrainian president’s hometown and other targets with suicide drones on Sunday, and Ukraine regained full control of a strategic eastern city in a counteroffensive that has reshaped the war.
The loss of Lyman to Russia, which it had been using as a transportation and logistics hub, is a further blow to the Kremlin as it seeks to escalate the war by illegally annexing four regions of Ukraine and increasing its threats to use nuclear force. Ukraine’s recent advances have embarrassed Russian President Vladimir Putin and sparked rare internal criticism.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that his forces now control Lyman, after the Russian army announced its withdrawal on Saturday.
“As of 12:30 pm (0930 GMT) Lyman is completely free. Thanks to our military, our warriors,” Zelenskyy said in a video address.
In southern Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s hometown of Krivyi Rih was attacked by Russia by a suicide drone that hit a school early Sunday and destroyed two floors, said Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.
In recent weeks, Russia has begun using Iranian-made suicide drones to strike targets in Ukraine. In southern Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said on Sunday it shot down five Iranian-made drones overnight, while two others managed to break through air defenses.
Meanwhile, Russian strikes also targeted the city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian authorities said on Sunday. And Ukraine’s military said on Sunday it carried out strikes against multiple Russian command posts, ammunition depots and two S-300 anti-aircraft batteries.
The reports of military activity could not be immediately verified.
Ukrainian forces have retook swathes of territory, especially in the northeast around Kharkiv, in a counteroffensive in recent weeks.
In the latest major development, Ukrainian forces surrounded Russian troops holding the center of Lyman in the east, forcing the Russians to withdraw in what the British Army described as a “significant political setback” for Moscow. Taking the city paves the way for Ukrainian troops to potentially push further into territory Russia has occupied.
Lyman had been an important link on the Russian front line for ground communications and logistics. Lyman is in the Donetsk region, near the border with Lugansk, two of the four regions that Russia illegally annexed on Friday after forcing people to vote in referendums at gunpoint.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have inflicted damage on Ukrainian forces in the struggle to hold Lyman, but said the outnumbered Russian troops were withdrawn to more favorable positions.
In his late-night speech on Saturday, Zelenskyy said: “Over the past week, there have been more Ukrainian flags in the Donbas. In a week there will be even more.”
In a daily intelligence briefing, the British Ministry of Defense called Lyman crucial because it has “a key road junction over the Siversky Donets River, behind which Russia has been trying to consolidate its defences.”
The British said they believed the city had been in the hands of “insufficient elements” before the Russian withdrawal, prompting immediate criticism from some Russian officials.
“Further losses of territory in illegally occupied territories will almost certainly lead to an intensification of this public criticism and increase pressure on senior commanders,” the British military report said.
Russia’s withdrawal from northeastern Ukraine in recent weeks has revealed evidence of widespread and routine torture of both civilians and soldiers, especially in the strategic city of Izium, an Associated Press investigation has found.
AP journalists located 10 torture sites in the Ukrainian city, including a deep, sunless pit in a residential compound, a damp, dank underground jail that reeked of urine, a medical clinic, and a kindergarten.
Russian officials publish limited information about military activity in what the Kremlin still refuses to call a war. Putin frames the Ukrainian gains as a US-orchestrated effort to destroy Russia, and last week he escalated threats of nuclear force in some of his harshest, most anti-Western rhetoric to date.
Pope Francis on Sunday condemned nuclear threats and called on Putin to stop “this spiral of violence and death.”
Meanwhile, international concerns are mounting over the fate of Europe’s largest nuclear plant after Russian forces detained its director.
The International Atomic Energy Agency announced on Sunday that its director general, Rafael Grossi, will visit Kyiv and Moscow in the coming days to discuss the situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Grossi continues to push for “a nuclear security and protection zone” around the site.
The plant is in a Russian-controlled area of Ukraine and within one of four regions that Moscow illegally annexed on Friday, and has repeatedly been caught in the crossfire of war. Ukrainian technicians continued to operate the power plant after it was seized by Russian troops, and its last reactor was shut down in September as a precaution.