Russian forces press major advance
Separatists claim control of Lyman
KYIV: Russia’s separatist proxies in eastern Ukraine claimed full control of the important battlefield town of Lyman yesterday, and Ukraine appeared to concede it, as Moscow presses its biggest advance for weeks.
Lyman, site of a key railway hub, has been a major front line as Russian forces press down from the north, one of three directions from which they have been attacking Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region. The pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic separatists said they were now in full control of it.
Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, appeared to confirm the fall of Lyman in an interview overnight, and said the battle there showed that Moscow was improving its tactics.
“According to unverified data, we lost the town of Lyman. The Russian army — this must be verified — captured it,” Mr Arestovych said in a video posted on social media.
“Moreover, the way they captured it .... correctly organising the operation. This shows, in principle, the increased level of operational management and tactical skills of the Russian army. It has grown. It has not grown everywhere of course, but it has unquestionably grown.”
After being driven back from the capital Kyiv in March and from the outskirts of the second biggest city Kharkiv earlier this month, Russian forces are staging their strongest advance in weeks in the eastern Donbas region.
Western military analysts say the battle there could prove decisive, depending on whether Russian forces can sustain the advance or run out of momentum.
Further east, Russian forces have been trying to encircle Ukrainian troops in the cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, after breaking through Ukrainian lines further south in the city of Popasna last week. Popasna, reached by Reuters journalists in Russian-held territory on Thursday, was a blasted wasteland of burnt-out highrise apartments and shattered municipal buildings. Russian tanks and other military vehicles tore through the rubble-strewn streets kicking up dust with their treads, and lowflying attack helicopters thundered overhead. The bloated body of a dead man in uniform lay in a courtyard.
Natalia Kovalenko, a resident, had finally come up in recent days from the cellar where she had been sheltering, to sleep amid the wreckage of her own flat. The balcony had been blown away and windows blasted off by a direct hit from a shell.
She recounted how two people had been killed and eight wounded by a shell when they went outside to cook. Inside her flat, her kitchen and living room were filled with rubble and debris, but she had tidied a small bedroom to sleep. She was tired of being trapped in the cellar.
“I just have to fix the window somehow. The wind is still bad. Cold at night,” she said. “We are tired of being so scared. So tired.”
In an overnight address, Mr Zelensky criticised the European Union for taking too long to ban Russian energy imports, saying the bloc was sending Moscow a billion euros a day which was funding the Kremlin’s war effort. He said some countries were blocking efforts to agree new sanctions, an apparent reference to Hungary, which has objected to an EU ban on Russian oil.
“Pressure on Russia is literally a matter of saving lives. Every day of procrastination, weakness, various disputes or proposals to ‘pacify’ the aggressor at the expense of the victim merely means more Ukrainians being killed,” he said.