Russian forces close in on province
DNIPRO, UKRAINE >> Ukrainian forces desperately tried to block a complete Russian takeover of one of the country's two eastern provinces Tuesday, with Russian troops clawing out incremental gains even as European leaders agreed to a partial oil embargo aimed at starving Moscow's mammoth war machine.
A combined force of Russian troops, Chechen fighters and pro-Moscow separatists slugged their way deeper into Severodonetsk, the Ukrainian government's seat of power in the province of Luhansk, seizing a sizable portion of a city that has been almost completely destroyed in the fighting.
“Unfortunately, the front line divides the city in half. But the city is still defending itself, the city is still Ukrainian, our soldiers are defending it,” Mayor Oleksandr Striuk said in an interview Tuesday with a Ukrainian broadcaster. He urged residents to remain in their shelters, adding that aid stockpiles would last a few more days.
The Luhansk regional governor, Serhiy Haidai, said Russian strikes also destroyed a nitric acid factory in the city. Photographs, which could not be independently authenticated, showed huge orange clouds of thick smoke rising into the sky and were posted on Ukrainian news websites. Haidai echoed the mayor, urging people to remain in shelters to avoid the toxic air.
Farther west, Russian artillery also pounded the city of Slovyansk, the next target after Severodonetsk as Russian forces advance. Several Ukrainian residents were reported killed and wounded Tuesday after Russian rockets hit an apartment complex where only a few dozen people still lived amid the intensified fighting. Most were sleeping when the attack came.
Earlier, the Moscow-backed leader of the self-proclaimed breakaway Luhansk People's Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, said one-third of Severodonetsk was in Russian hands, adding that his forces controlled 95% of Luhansk's territory.
“Our offensive is proceeding perhaps not as fast as we would like,” Pasechnik said in an interview with Russian state news agency Tass. “But above all, we want to preserve the infrastructure of the city as much as possible.”
Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian assault had already destroyed all of Severodonetsk's “critical infrastructure.” Another city official last week said about 90% of residential buildings in the city were damaged.
In separate comments Tuesday, Zelenskyy pushed back on suggestions in some quarters — including former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — that Ukraine should be prepared to give up some territory to Russia to end the war. Ukraine's mission was to dislodge Russian “occupiers” from all parts of the country, Zelenskyy said. “I don't care what Russia's plans are,” he said, according to the presidential office. Some Biden administration officials are privately beginning to see that goal as unrealistic.
Amid the fighting, two Russian soldiers were convicted of war crimes by a Ukrainian court, which sentenced each man to 11 1/2 years in prison. Alexander Bobykin and Alexander Ivanov were charged with shelling civilian buildings in the Kharkiv region Feb. 24, the first day of the Russian invasion. It is the second war crimes trial since the conflict began.