Russia pushes Donbas offensive
KRAMATORSK, UKRAINE 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.
“Massive artillery shelling does not stop, day and night,” Sievierodonetsk Mayor Oleksandr Striuk told The Associated Press. “The city is being systematically destroyed — 90 per cent of the buildings in the city are damaged.”
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. More than 20,000 of its civilians are feared dead.
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. At least 1,500 people have died because of the war, now in its 93rd day.
Gen. Phillip Breedlove, former head of U.S. European Command for NATO, said Friday during a panel mounted by the Washingtonbased Middle East Institute that Russia appears to have “once again adjusted its objectives, and fearfully now it seems that they are trying to consolidate and enforce the land that they have rather than focus on expanding it.”
But 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.
That aggressive push could backfire, however, by seriously depleting Russia’s arsenal. Echoing an assessment from the British Defence Ministry, military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said Russia was deploying 50-year-old T-62 tanks, “which means that the second army of the world has run out of modernized equipment.”
Russia-backed rebels said Friday that they had taken over Lyman, Donetsk’s large railway hub north of two more key cities still under Ukrainian control. Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych acknowledged the loss Thursday night, though a Ukrainian Defence Ministry spokesperson reported Friday that its soldiers countered Russian attempts to completely push them out.
As Ukraine’s hopes of stopping the Russian advance faded, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba pleaded with western nations for heavy weapons, saying it was the one area in which Russia had a clear advantage.
“Without artillery, without multiple launch rocket systems we won’t be able to push them back,” he said.