Ukraine fears repeat of Mariupol horrors elsewhere in Donbas
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (AP) — Moscow-backed separatists pounded eastern Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region Friday, claiming the capture of a railway hub as concerns grew that besieged cities in the region would undergo the same horrors experienced by the people of Mariupol in the weeks leading up to the port’s capture.
Ukrainian officials renewed their appeals for more sophisticated Western-supplied weaponry. Without it, they said, Ukrainian forces wouldn’t be able to stop Russia’s offensive.
The fighting Friday focused on two key cities: Sievierodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk. They are the last areas under Ukrainian control in Luhansk, one of two provinces that make up the Donbas and where Russia-backed separatists have already controlled some territory for eight years. Authorities say 1,500 people in Sievierodonetsk have already died since the war’s start scarcely more than three months ago.
Striuk described conditions in Sievierodonetsk reminiscent of the battle for Mariupol, located in the Donbas’ other province, Donetsk. Now in ruins, the port city was constantly barraged by Russian forces in a nearly three-month siege that ended last week when Russia claimed its capture.
Before the war, Sievierodonetsk was home to around 100,000 people. About 12,000 to 13,000 remain in the city, Striuk said, huddled in shelters and largely cut off from the rest of Ukraine.
The relentless assaults in the Donbas also indicated Russia’s desire to expand its dominion there. Ukrainian analysts said Russian forces have taken advantage of delays in Western arms shipments to step up their offensive there.
That aggressive push could backfire, however, by seriously depleting Russia’s arsenal. Echoing an assessment from the British Defense Ministry, military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said Russia was deploying 50-yearold T-62 tanks, “which means that the second army of the world has run out of modernized equipment.”
Just south of Sievierodonetsk, volunteers hoped to evacuate 100 people from a smaller town. It was a painstaking process: Many of the evacuees from Bakhmut were elderly or infirm and needed to be carried out of apartment buildings in soft stretchers and wheelchairs.
Minibuses and vans zipped through the city, picking up dozens for the first leg of a long journey west.
In his nightly address to the nation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had some harsh words for the European Union, which has not agreed on a sixth round of sanctions that includes an embargo on Russian oil. Hungary, one of Moscow’s closest allies in the EU, is obstructing the deal.
Zelenskyy said Russia’s offensive in the Donbas could leave its communities in ashes, and he accused Moscow of pursuing “an obvious policy of genocide” through mass deportations and killings of civilians.
On Thursday, Russian shelling of Kharkiv, a northeastern city, killed nine people, including a father and his 5-month-old baby, the president said. AP reporters saw the bodies of at least two dead men and four wounded at a subway station where the victims were taken.