[ad_1]
© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Native resident Viacheslav walks on particles of a residential constructing broken by a navy strike, as Russia’s assault on Ukraine continues, in Sievierodonetsk, Luhansk area, Ukraine April 16, 2022. REUTERS/Serhii Nuzhnenko
2/3
By Pavel Polityuk and Abdelaziz Boumzar
KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian forces had been holding their positions in intense road preventing and below day and night time shelling in Sievierodonetsk, officers stated, as Russia pushes to regulate the bombed-out metropolis, key to its goal of controlling jap Ukraine.
Sievierodonetsk and its twin metropolis Lysychansk, on the alternative financial institution of the Siverskyi Donets river, are the final Ukrainian-controlled elements of Luhansk province, which Russia is decided to grab as one in every of its principal battle goals.
Ukraine’s Safety Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov stated on Thursday the state of affairs in Sievierodonetsk was “extraordinarily sophisticated” and Russian forces had been focusing all of their may within the space.
“They don’t spare their folks, they’re simply sending males like cannon fodder … they’re shelling our navy day and night time,” Danilov advised Reuters in an interview.
Ukraine says its solely hope to show the tide in its favour within the small industrial metropolis is extra artillery to offset Russia’s large firepower.
In a uncommon replace from Sievierodonetsk, the commander of Ukraine’s Svoboda Nationwide Guard Battalion, Petro Kusyk, stated Ukrainians had been drawing the Russians into road preventing to neutralise their artillery benefit.
“Yesterday was profitable for us – we launched a counteroffensive and in some areas we managed to push them again one or two blocks. In others they pushed us again, however simply by a constructing or two,” he stated in a televised interview.
However he stated his forces had been affected by a “catastrophic” lack of counter-battery artillery to fireside again at Russia’s weapons, and getting such weapons would rework the battlefield.
Reuters couldn’t confirm the battlefield studies.
Within the south, the place Russia is attempting to impose its rule on a tract of occupied territory spanning Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces, Ukraine’s defence ministry stated it had captured new floor in a counter-attack in Kherson province.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated in a night handle that Ukraine had “some optimistic developments within the Zaporizhzhia area, the place we’re succeeding in disrupting the occupiers’ plans”. He didn’t present particulars.
Reuters couldn’t independently confirm the state of affairs on the bottom in Zaporizhzhia or Kherson. Russian-installed proxies in each provinces say they’re planning referendums to affix Russia.
1000’s of individuals have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled since Russia launched its “particular navy operation” to disarm and “denazify” its neighbour on Feb. 24. Ukraine and its allies name the invasion an unprovoked battle of aggression.
Talking in Moscow to mark the 350th anniversary of Russian Tsar Peter the Nice’s beginning, President Vladimir Putin drew a parallel between what he portrayed as their historic quests to win again what he known as Russian lands.
“Peter the Nice waged the Nice Northern Struggle for 21 years. It will appear that he was at battle with Sweden, he took one thing from them. He didn’t take something from them, he returned (what was Russia’s),” Putin stated.
‘WE ARE STAYING’
Sievierodonetsk Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk stated about 10,000 civilians had been nonetheless trapped within the metropolis – roughly a tenth of its pre-war inhabitants.
To the west of Sievierodonetsk, Russia is pushing from the north and south, attempting to lure Ukrainian forces within the Donbas area, comprising Luhansk and neighbouring Donetsk province.
Russia shelled greater than 20 cities in Donetsk and Luhansk on Thursday, destroying or damaging 49 properties, a number of manufacturing vegetation, farm buildings and a rail station, stated the Ukraine navy. Two civilians had been killed, it stated.
Russia says it doesn’t goal civilians.
In Soledar, a salt-mining city close to Bakhmut near the entrance line, buildings had been blasted into craters.
Remaining residents, principally aged, had been sheltering in a crowded cellar. Antonina, 65, had ventured out to see her backyard. “We’re staying. We reside right here. We had been born right here,” she sobbed. “When is all of it going to finish?”
GRAIN
Within the self-proclaimed Donetsk Individuals’s Republic, one in every of Russia’s proxies in jap Ukraine, a court docket sentenced to dying two Britons and a Moroccan who had been captured whereas preventing for Ukraine, Russian information businesses reported.
Britain condemned the court docket’s resolution as a “sham judgment” with no legitimacy.
Ukraine is without doubt one of the world’s greatest grain and meals oil exporters, and worldwide consideration has centered in latest weeks on the specter of worldwide famine seen as brought on by Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
“Tens of millions of individuals could starve if the Russian blockade of the Black Sea continues,” Zelenskiy stated in televised remarks.
Russia blames the meals disaster on Western sanctions proscribing its personal grain exports. It says it’s keen to let Ukrainian ports open for exports if Ukraine removes mines and meets different situations. Ukraine calls such presents empty guarantees.
(This story refiles to take away garble in first paragraph.)
[ad_2]
Source link