PUTIN STILL ‘LOSING WAR’
Russian troops on Saturday took control of Severodonetsk, one of the last holdouts in the breakaway eastern region of Luhansk — even as Western intelligence agencies predicted that the invading military will soon exhaust combat capabilities and be forced to halt its offensive.
Hundreds of civilians were believed to remain trapped in underground bunkers at a chemical plant on the edge of Severodonetsk, the only way out through Russia-controlled territory. Shells continued to pound the plant Saturday, the Kyiv Independent reported, citing the regional governor, Serhiy Haidai. Estimates put the number of people sheltering in the plants sprawling underground between 500 to 800.
“The Russians have fully occupied Severodonetsk, our military has retreated to more prepared positions,” Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk told Ukrainian TV.
Prior to the war, Severodonetsk had about 100,000 residents. Fewer than 10,000 are thought to remain in the now battered city, left in ruins by weeks of shelling. All bridges to the city have been destroyed by Russian troops, along with most of the city’s infrastructure.
Ukraine’s military began withdrawing from the area Friday after seeing severe losses in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, separatist forces allied with Russia’s army said they moved into parts of Lysychansk, the “twin city” of Severodonetsk on the other side of the Donetsk River, and now the last city in the eastern Luhansk region still standing against the invasion. That’s a key development because Putin has justified the invasion with claims that he is protecting the people of Luhansk — a mainly Russian-speaking region where Kremlin-backed fighting has been ongoing since 2014 — from genocide.
Together with the Donetsk province, it makes up the area called the Donbas, which Putin claimed as Russian territory as the invasion began.
Chatter on Russian Telegram channels and statements from Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Anna Malyar, suggested the Russian military is under pressure to bring all of Luhansk under its control by Sunday.
The UK Ministry of Defense said the Ukrainian troop reconfiguring came as “Russian armored units continue to make creeping gains on the southern edge” of the area.
Heavy losses
But those creeping advances depend almost completely on spending vast amounts of artillery shells and other ammunition, which are being fired at a rate no military could sustain for long, a senior Western official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue, told The Washington Post. At the same time, Russia is suffering heavy losses of equipment and men, raising questions about how much longer it can sustain the attack.
“There will come a time when the tiny advances Russia is making become unsustainable in light of the costs and they will need a significant pause to regenerate capability,” the official said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, citing intelligence assessments, said in a recent interview that Russia would be able to continue to fight on only for the “next few months.” After that, “Russia could come to a point when there is no longer any forward momentum because it has exhausted its resources,” he told the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Separately, Russia claimed its troops have killed dozens of Polish fighters in the Donetsk region, The Telegraph reported.
“Up to 80 Polish mercenaries, 20 armored combat vehicles and eight Grad multiple rocket launchers were destroyed in precision strikes on the Megatex zinc factory in Konstantinovka,” it quoted the Russian defense ministry as saying.