Russia takes small cities, aims to widen eastern battle
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — As Russia asserted progress in its goal of seizing the entirety of contested eastern Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin tried Saturday to shake European resolve to punish his country with sanctions and to keep supplying weapons that have supported Ukraine’s defense.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Lyman, the second small city to fall this week, had been “completely liberated” by a joint force of Russian soldiers and Kremlinbacked separatists, who have waged war for eight years in the industrial Donbas region bordering Russia.
Ukraine’s train system has ferried arms and evacuated citizens through Lyman, a key railway hub in the east. Control of it also would give Russia’s military another foothold in the region; it has bridges for troops and equipment to cross the Siverskiy Donets river, which has so far impeded the Russian advance into the Donbas.
Ukrainian officials have sent mixed signals on Lyman. On Friday, Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said Russian troops controlled most of it and were trying to press their offensive toward Bakhmut, another city in the region. On Saturday, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar disputed Moscow’s claim that Lyman had fallen, saying fighting there was still ongoing.
In his Saturday video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the situation in the east as “very complicated’’ and said that the “Russian army is trying to squeeze at least some result’’ by focusing its efforts there.
The Kremlin said Mr. Putin held an 80-minute
phone call Saturday with the leaders of France and Germany in which he warned against the continued transfers of Western weapons to Ukraine and blamed the conflict’s disruption to global food supplies on Western sanctions.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron urged an immediate cease-fire and a withdrawal of Russian troops, according to the chancellor’s spokesperson, and called on Mr. Putin to engage in serious, direct negotiations with Mr. Zelenskyy on ending the fighting.
A Kremlin readout of the call said Mr. Putin affirmed “the openness of the Russian side to the resumption of dialogue.” The three leaders, whohad gone weeks without speaking during the spring, agreed to stay in contact, it added.
But Russia’s recent progress in Donetsk and Luhansk, the two provinces that make up the Donbas, could further embolden Mr. Putin. Since failing to occupy Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, Russia has set out to seize the last parts of the region not controlled by the
separatists.
“If Russia did succeed in taking over these areas, it would highly likely be seen by the Kremlin as a substantive political achievement and be portrayed to the Russian people as justifying the invasion,” the British Ministry of Defense said in a Saturday assessment.
Russia has intensified efforts to capture the cities of Sievierodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk, which are the last major areas under Ukrainian control in Luhansk.
Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai reported that Ukrainian fighters repelled an assault on Sievierodonetsk but Russian troops still pushed to encircle them. Later Saturday he said Russian forces had seized a hotel on the city’s outskirts.
Sievierodonetsk Mayor Oleksandr Striuk said the previous day that some 1,500 civilians in the city, which had a prewar population of around 100,000, have died, including from a lack of medicine or diseases that could not be treated.
Russia’s advance raised fears that residents could experience the same horrors seen in the southeastern port city of Mariupol in the weeks before it fell. Residents who had not yet fled faced the choice of trying to do so now or staying.
Just south of Sievierodonetsk, AP reporters saw older and ill civilians bundled into soft stretchers and slowly carried down apartment building stairs Friday in Bakhmut.
Svetlana Lvova, the manager of two buildings in Bakhmut, tried to persuade reluctant residents to leave but said she and her husband would not evacuate until their son, who was in Sievierodonetsk, returned home.
“I have to know he is alive. That’s why I’m staying here,” said Ms. Lvova, 66.
On Saturday, people who managed to flee Lysychansk described intensified shelling, especially over the past week, that left them unable to leave basement bomb shelters.
Yanna Skakova left the city Friday with her 18month-old and 4-year-old sons and cried as she sat in a train bound for western Ukraine. Her husband stayed behind to take care of their house and animals.
“It’s too dangerous to stay there now,” she said, wiping away tears.
A nearly three-month siege of Mariupol ended last week when Russia claimed complete control of the city. Mariupol became a symbol of massive destruction and human suffering, as well as of Ukrainian determination to defend the country.
Mariupol’s port has reportedly resumed operations after Russian forces finished clearing mines in the Azov Sea. Russian state news agency Tass reported that a vessel bound for Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia entered the port early Saturday.
In the call with Mr. Macron and Mr. Scholz, the Kremlin said, Mr. Putin emphasized that Russia was working to “establish a peaceful life in Mariupol and other liberated cities in the Donbas.”