Regional capital ‘to use rouble’
THE US yesterday accused Russia of planning to stage fake independence votes to justify its conquest of territory in Ukraine, as Russian forces stepped up their assault on the east.
More than two months into an invasion that has flattened cities but failed to capture the capital, Kyiv, Russia has mounted a push to seize two eastern provinces in a battle the West views as a decisive turning point in the war.
Although Russian troops were pushed out of northern Ukraine last month, they are heavily entrenched in the east, and also still hold a swathe of the south that they seized in March.
The US mission to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said the Kremlin might attempt “sham referenda” in southern and eastern areas it had captured since the February 24 invasion.
“These falsified, illegitimate referenda will undoubtedly be accompanied by a wave of abuses against those who seek to oppose or undermine Moscow’s plans,” it said.
Ukraine said there were explosions overnight in the southern city of Kherson,
the only regional capital Russia has captured so far since the invasion. Russian troops there had used tear gas and stun grenades on Wednesday to suppress pro-Ukrainian crowds, and were now shelling the entire surrounding region and attacking towards Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine said.
Russian state media quoted an official from a self-styled pro-Russian “military-civilian commission” in Kherson yesterday as saying the area would start using Russia’s rouble currency from May 1.
Ukraine’s general staff said Russia was also stepping up its main military assault in the east, where Moscow now aims to seize all of two provinces partially controlled by separatists since 2014. It identified Russia’s main attack as near the towns of Slobozhanske and Donetsk, along a strategic front-line highway linking Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv with the Russian-occupied city of Izyum.
The Kharkiv regional governor said Russian forces were intensifying attacks from Izyum, but Ukrainian troops were holding their ground.
Western countries have ramped up weapons deliveries to Ukraine as the fighting in the east has intensified. More than 40 countries met this week at a US air base in Germany and pledged to send heavy arms such as artillery for what is expected to be a vast battle of opposing armies along a heavily fortified front line.
Washington now says it hopes Ukrainian forces can not only repel Russia’s assault on the east, but also weaken its military so that it can no longer threaten neighbours. Russia says that amounts to Nato waging “proxy war” against it, and has made a number of threats of retaliation.
“If someone intends to intervene in the ongoing events from the outside, and create strategic threats for Russia that are unacceptable to us, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning-fast,” President Vladimir Putin told MPs in St Petersburg on Wednesday.
“We have all the tools for this, things no one else can boast of having now. And we will not boast, we will use them if necessary.”
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres struck an emotional note during a visit to the formerly Russian-occupied Kyiv suburbs of Borodyanka and Bucha. “I imagine my family in one of those homes, now destroyed and black. I see my granddaughters running away in panic, part of the family eventually killed,” Guterres said in Borodyanka, surrounded by scorched, windowless apartment blocks. “Innocent civilians were living in these buildings, they were paying the highest price for a war.”
Guterres met Putin in Moscow on Wednesday on a failed peace mission.
Ukrainian troops are still holed up in a giant steel works in the besieged port city of Mariupol. Putin claimed victory in the city last week, ordering the steel works blockaded. Kyiv says 100 000 civilians are still trapped in the city’s ruins.
“As long as we’re here and holding the defence … the city is not theirs,” Captain Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, said from an undisclosed location beneath the huge factory.
More than five million refugees have fled abroad since Russia invaded Ukraine.