In eastern city, Ukraine defies call to surrender

Civilians holed up in the shelters of the Azot chemical plant in Sievierodonetsk echoed the earlier siege in Mariupol

KYIV: Ukraine ignored a Russian ultimatum to surrender the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk on Wednesday as Nato defence ministers gathered in Brussels to discuss sending more heavy weapons to replenish Kyiv’s dwindling stocks.

Russia had told Ukrainian forces holed up in a chemical plant in the shattered city to stop “senseless resistance and lay down arms” from Wednesday morning, pressing its advantage in the battle for control of eastern Ukraine.

Plans announced by Moscow to open a humanitarian corridor for civilians stuck in the plant were disrupted by Ukrainian shelling, Russian-backed separatists were quoted by RIA news agency as saying.

The separatists had planned to take the civilians to territory under their own control.

Ukraine says more than 500 civilians, including 40 children, are trapped alongside soldiers inside the Azot chemical factory, where its forces have resisted weeks of Russian bombardment that has reduced much of Sievierodonetsk to ruins.

The mayor of Sievierodonetsk, Oleksandr Stryuk, said after the early morning deadline passed

that Russian forces were trying to storm the city from several directions but Ukrainian forces continued to defend it and were not completely cut off.

“We are trying to push the enemy towards the city centre,” he said on television, without referring to the ultimatum. “This is an ongoing situation with partial successes and tactical retreats.”

“The escape routes are dangerous, but there are some,” he said.

Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the Luhansk region containing Sievierodonetsk, said the army was

defending the city and keeping Russian forces from Lysychansk, the twin city held by Ukraine on the opposite bank of the Siverskyi Donets river.

“Nevertheless, the Russians are close and the population is suffering and homes are being destroyed,” he posted online just before Russia’s 8am Moscow time deadline.

Luhansk is one of two eastern provinces Moscow claims on behalf of separatist proxies. Together they make up the Donbas, an industrial Ukrainian region where Russia has focused its assault after failing to take

Ukraine’s capital Kyiv in March.

British intelligence said the fighters in the chemical plant could survive underground and Russian forces would likely remain focused on them, keeping them from attacking elsewhere.

But Ukrainian forces on the eastern front were exhausted and outnumbered, British defence minister Ben Wallace said. Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield accounts.

‘Brussels, we are waiting’

Western countries have promised Nato-standard weapons including advanced US rockets. But deploying them is taking time and Zelensky said Ukraine does not have enough anti-missile systems and there was no justification for delays.

His adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said the defenders of Sievierodonetsk wanted to know when the weapons would arrive. “Brussels, we are waiting for a decision,” he wrote on Twitter.

“We are extremely focused on stepping up support,” Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said before the meeting in Brussels led by US defence secretary Lloyd Austin. It is the third time the group of nearly 50 countries are meeting to coordinate assistance to Ukraine.

Elsewhere in the Donbas, Ukraine says Russia plans to attack Sloviansk from the north and along a front near Bakhmut to the south. The sound of shelling could be heard 40km south of Bakhmut near the town of Niu-York, where Ukrainian forces said Russia was throwing everything into the battle.