Russian troops backed by airstrikes pummeled a portion of eastern Ukraine on Saturday, blowing up bridges and shelling apartment buildings.
Reinforced Russian troops backed by airstrikes pummeled a portion of eastern Ukraine on Saturday, blowing up bridges and shelling apartment buildings as they fought to capture two cities that would put a contested province under Moscow’s control, Ukrainian officials said. Russian and Ukrainian forces battled street-by-street in Sievierodonetsk and neighboring Lysychansk, regional governor Serhiy Haidai said. Russian strikes killed four people, including a mother and child, in the nearby village of Hirske, Haidai said. The cities are the last major areas of Luhansk province still held by Ukraine. The Russian attacks are central to the Kremlin’s reduced wartime goal of seizing the entire Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for eight years and established self-proclaimed republics. Russia also escalated attacks in Donestk, the other province that makes up the Donbas, the Ukrainian military said, as the war reached its 101st day. Reflecting the close combat, Russian and Ukrainian military officers blamed each other for a fire that destroyed the main church at the Sviatohirsk monastery, one of Ukraine’s holiest Orthodox Christian sites. In a video address Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of “deliberately destroying the Ukrainian culture and its historic legacy along with social infrastructure and housing — everything needed for normal living.”
In recent days Russian forces have focused on capturing Sievierodonetsk, which had a prewar population of about 100,000. At one point they held 90% of the city, but Ukrainian soldiers clawed back some ground, Haidai reported Friday. Zelenskyy described the city’s situation as “extremely difficult” on Saturday. Western military analysts said Russia was devoting significant troop strength and firepower to what British officials called a “creeping advance” in the Donbas.
“The combined use of air and artillery strikes has been a key factor in Russia’s recent tactical successes in the region,” the U.K. Ministry of Defense said in a Saturday assessment. The ministry warned that after launching so many guided missiles, Russia was employing unguided missiles that have “almost certainly caused substantial collateral damage and civilian casualties.”
The Ukrainian military reported that it repulsed nine attacks in the Donbas over 24 hours.
