KYIV, Ukraine
Russia on Tuesday claimed to
have taken control of 97% of one of the two provinces that make up Ukraine’s
Donbas, bringing the Kremlin closer to its goal of fully capturing the eastern
industrial heartland of coal mines and factories.A boy holds a boot of a killed Russian soldier at a destroyed Russian tank installed as a symbol of war in central Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, June 7, 2022. St Michael cathedral is in the background.
Russian Defense Minister
Sergei Shoigu said Moscow’s forces hold nearly all of Luhansk province. And it
appears that Russia now occupies roughly half of Donetsk province, according to
Ukrainian officials and military analysts.
After abandoning its bungled
attempt to storm Kyiv two months ago, Russia declared that taking the entire
Donbas is its main objective. Moscow-backed separatists have been battling
Ukrainian government forces in the Donbas since 2014, and the region has borne
the brunt of the Russian onslaught in recent weeks.
Early in the war, Russian
troops also took control of the entire Kherson region and a large part of the
Zaporizhzhia region, both in the south. Russian officials and their local
appointees have talked about plans for those regions to either declare their
independence or be folded into Russia.
But in what may be the latest
instance of anti-Russian sabotage inside Ukraine, Russian state media said
Tuesday that an explosion at a cafe in the city of Kherson wounded four people.
Tass called the apparent bombing in the Russian-occupied city a “terror act.”
Before the Feb. 24
invasion, Ukrainian
officials said Russia controlled some 7% of the country, including the
Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, and areas held by the
separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy said Russian forces hold 20% of the country.
While Russia has superior
firepower, the Ukrainian defenders are entrenched and have shown the ability to
counterattack.
Zelenskyy said Russian forces
made no significant advances in the eastern Donbas region over the past day.
“The absolutely heroic defense
of the Donbas continues,” he said late Tuesday in his nightly video address.
Zelenskyy said the Russians
clearly did not expect to meet so much resistance and are now trying to bring
in additional troops and equipment. He said the same was true in the Kherson
region.
Speaking earlier to a Financial Times conference, Zelenskyy insisted on Ukraine’s need to defeat Russia on the battlefield but also said he is still open to peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But a former senior U.S.
intelligence officer said the time isn’t right.
“You’re not going to get to the
negotiating table until neither side feels they have an advantage that they
could push,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor of the Washington-based Center for a
New American Security.
The Russians “think they will
be able to take the whole of the Donbas and then might use that as the
opportunity to call for negotiations,” Kendall-Taylor said at an online seminar
organized by Columbia and New York universities.
Shoigu, the Russian defense
minister, said Moscow’s forces have seized the residential quarters of Sievierodonetsk
and are fighting to take control of an industrial zone on the city’s outskirts
and nearby towns.
Sievierodonetsk and nearby
Lysychansk have seen heavy fighting in recent weeks. They are among a few
cities and towns in the Luhansk region still holding out against the Russian
invasion, which is being helped by local pro-Kremlin forces.
Shoigu added that Russian
troops were pressing their offensive toward the town of Popasna and have taken
control of Lyman and Sviatohirsk and 15 other towns in the region.An injured Ukrainian servicemen is transferred to a medical facility after getting an emergency medical treatment in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Tuesday, June 7, 2022.
Ukrainian presidential adviser
Mykhailo Podolyak urged his people not to be downhearted about the battlefield
reverses.
“Don’t let the news that we’ve
ceded something scare you,” he said in a video address. “It is clear that
tactical maneuvers are ongoing. We cede something, we take something back.”
Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai
conceded that Russian forces control the industrial outskirts of
Sievierodonetsk.
“The toughest street battles
continue, with varying degrees of success,” Haidai said. “The situation
constantly changes, but the Ukrainians are repelling attacks.”
Moscow’s forces also kept up
their artillery barrage of Lysychansk. Haidai said Russian troops shelled a
market, a school and a college building, destroying the latter. At least three
people were wounded, he said.
“A total destruction of the
city is under way. Russian shelling has intensified significantly over the past
24 hours. Russians are using scorched-earth tactics,” Haidai said. - AP
No comments:
Post a Comment