Severodonetsk not cut off: Kyiv

Ukraine’s troops were still holding out in the eastern city, it said, after Russian troops destroyed the last bridge leading to it

KYIV: Ukrainian authorities said on Tuesday a third bridge to Severodonetsk has been destroyed but that the eastern city is not cut off, despite Russian forces bearing down after weeks of bloody battles.

The head of the city’s administration, Oleksandr Stryuk, said “massive shelling has destroyed a third bridge” over the Siverskyi Donets River, linking the city to Ukrainian-controlled Lysychansk.

“But the city is not isolated,” Stryuk told Ukrainian television. “There are communication channels even if they are quite complicated.”

He said Ukrainian troops “continue to defend the city” and that there is round-the-clock fighting, adding that the ground situation “changes every hour”.

Russian troops control about 80% of the city and have destroyed all three bridges leading out of it, an official said on Tuesday.

“There is still an opportunity for the evacuation of the wounded, communication with the Ukrainian military and local residents,” Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Haidai told The Associated Press.

Still, Haidai acknowledged that the mass evacuation of civilians now is “simply not possible” due to the relentless shelling and fighting in the city. Ukrainian forces have been pushed out to the industrial outskirts of the city because of “the scorched earth method and heavy artillery the Russians are using”, he said.

Kyiv recovers Azovstal fighters’ bodies

Kyiv said on Tuesday it had received the bodies of 64 soldiers who died defending Mariupol’s steelworks in an exchange with Moscow that saw Ukraine returning the remains of Russian troops.

“Ukraine has recovered the bodies of 64 heroic Azovstal defenders for their dignified burial,” the Ukrainian reintegration ministry, which is responsible for the territory under Russia’s control. The ministry said the swap took place in the Zaporizhzhia region but did not say exactly when, nor did it specify how many Russian soldiers’ bodies had been returned.

The exchange came after two previous swaps between Kyiv and Moscow involving 210 dead Ukrainian soldiers that were made public earlier this month.

Pope raps Russian ‘cruelty’ in Ukraine

Pope Francis has taken a new series of swipes at Russia for its actions in Ukraine, saying its troops were brutal, cruel and ferocious, while praising “brave” Ukrainians for fighting for survival.

But in the text of a conversation he had last month with editors of Jesuit media and published on Tuesday, he also said the situation was not black and white and that the war was “perhaps in some way provoked”.

While condemning “the ferocity, the cruelty of Russian troops, we must not forget the real problems if we want them to be solved,” Francis said, including the armaments industry among the factors that provide incentives for war.