Russian military has blown up a bridge connecting Ukraine’s Svyarodonetsk city to another city across the river, closing a possible evacuation route for civilians, local officials said on Sunday.
Svirodonetsk has become the center of the fight for control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region. Parts of the city have been crushed in the bloodiest fighting since the invasion of the Kremlin on 24 February.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address, “The key strategic goal of the occupiers has not changed: they are pressing into Svyarodonetsk, there is serious fighting going on – literally for every meter,” it said. Saying that the Russian army was trying to deploy the reserve. Force to the Donbass.
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Zelensky said the image of a 12-year-old boy wounded in a Russian attack is now the permanent worldwide face of Russia. “These very facts will underline how the world views Russia,” he said.
“Not Peter the Great, not Lev Tolstoy, but children injured and killed in Russian attacks,” he said, in an apparent reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks, comparing Moscow’s military operation last week to that of Russian Emperor Peter the Great. The land was conquered in the 18th century. Organized by Sweden.
Serhi Gaidai, governor of Luhansk province, said on Sunday that Ukrainian and Russian forces were fighting street-to-street in Svyarodonetsk.
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Russian forces have captured most of the city, but Ukrainian troops control an industrial area and the Azot chemical plant where hundreds of civilians are taking refuge. “Around 500 civilians live on the territory of the Azot plant in Svyarodonetsk, 40 of them are children. Sometimes the army manages to evacuate someone,” Gaidai said.
But the Russians had destroyed a bridge over the Siversky Donets River, which connected Svirodonetsk with its twin city of Lisichansk, Gaidai said.
This left only one of the three bridges standing.
“If the bridge collapses after the new shelling, the city will really be cut off. There will be no way to leave Svyerodonetsk in a vehicle,” Gaidai said, noting the lack of a ceasefire agreement and no agreed evacuation corridors.
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Gedai said that in Lisichansk, a six-year-old was killed in Russian shelling.
strategic impact
After being forced to reduce its initial targets following the February 24 invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has turned its attention to increasing control in the Donbass, where pro-Russian separatists have occupied the area since 2014.
The fall of Svyarodonetsk, the last pocket of Ukrainian land held in the strategic Luhansk region, would move Russia a major step closer to one of the goals Putin called a “special military operation”.
Elsewhere, Russian cruise missiles destroyed a large depot containing US and European weapons in the Ternopil region of western Ukraine, Russia’s Interfax agency reported.
Ternopil’s governor said rockets fired from the Black Sea in the city of Chortkiv partially destroyed a military facility and injured 22 people. A local official said no weapon was kept there.
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Reuters could not independently confirm the individual accounts.
Moscow has criticized the United States and other countries for sending weapons to Ukraine, threatening to strike new targets if the West supplies long-range missiles.
Ukraine’s leaders have recently made requests for more heavy weapons. On Sunday, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Facebook that the chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, had spoken to top US military official General Mark Milley, and reiterated his request for more heavy artillery systems.
According to the General Staff of Ukraine, Russian forces were firing mortars and artillery south and southwest of Svyarodonetsk. But it said Ukrainian forces had repelled Russian attempts to advance towards some communities.
Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield reports.
Putin says Russia’s actions are aimed at disarmament and “rejection” of Ukraine. Kyiv and its allies call this an unprovoked war of aggression to capture the region.
Also on Sunday, the leader of the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk region in the Donbass said there was no reason to pardon two British nationals sentenced to death last week after being caught fighting for Ukraine.
A court in Donetsk on Thursday found Aiden Aslin and Sean Piner – and Moroccan Brahim Sadoun – guilty of “mercenary activities” to overthrow the republic. read more
Britain maintains that Aslin and Pinner were regular soldiers who were exempted from prosecution for taking part in hostilities under the Geneva Convention. Aslin’s family said that he and Pinner “are not mercenaries, and never were.”
Separately, the family of Jordan Gatley, a former British soldier, said on social media that he was killed while fighting for Ukraine in Svyarodonetsk.
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