Russian push continues in region
Some advances in east repelled, Ukraine says
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Russia redoubled its push for Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region Wednesday, with the Ukrainian military claiming to have repelled some advances as shelling killed at least eight civilians in the area over the past 24 hours and wounded 25. Pro-russia separatists said Ukrainian attacks killed four civilians on their side of the front.
The Ukrainian armed forces General Staff said troops stopped enemy units advancing toward Sloviansk, a city in Donetsk, one of two provinces in the Donbas whose capture is among Moscow’s main goals. It also claimed to have repelled Russian attacks on a town and village north of Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, miles from the Russian border.
The Ukrainian presidential office said most civilian casualties were in Donetsk province, where Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said two people died in the city of Avdiivka; the cities of Sloviansk, Krasnohorivka and Kurakhove each reported one civilian killed.
“Every crime will be punished,” he wrote on social media.
Kyrylenko urged the province’s more than 350,000 remaining residents to flee late Tuesday, saying that evacuating Donetsk was necessary to save lives and allow the Ukrainian army to put up a better defense against the Russian advance.
Donetsk is part of the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking industrial area where Ukraine’s most experienced soldiers are concentrated. Pro-russian separatists have fought Ukrainian forces and controlled much of the Donbas for eight years.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, the two self-proclaimed separatist republics. Putin on Monday declared the complete seizure of Luhansk, after Ukrainian troops withdrew from the last city under their control in the province.
The Russian military pounded Luhansk for weeks from the air and ground, causing mass destruction and large civilian casualties. When Russian troops enter villages and cities, they are largely empty. From pre-war populations each of around 100,000, only up to 15,000 residents remain in Lysychansk and some 8,000 in the nearby city of Sievierodonetsk, which Russian and separatist fighters seized last month, Haidai said.
Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskky, in his nightly video address Wednesday, said that of all the battles in his country, “the most brutal confrontation” is raging in the Donbas.
Elsewhere on the battlefield:
■ In southern Ukraine, a local official said one person died and four were wounded in a blast in a Russian-occupied town, Skadovsk. Mayor Oleksandr Yakovlev told the Suspilne broadcaster a child was among those injured in an explosion that tore through a residential building.
■ Russian state media said Wednesday that an oil refinery in Donetsk had caught fire because of Ukrainian shelling. The Tass news agency cited a separatists’ claim that the refinery fire was one of 27 Ukrainian attacks on Donetsk over the previous 24 hours. Ukrainian authorities didn’t confirm the attack. In other developments:
■ European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the 27-nation European Union needs to make emergency plans to prepare for a complete cutoff of Russian gas. The EU has imposed sanctions on Russia, including on some energy supplies, and is trying to find other sources. But von der Leyen said the bloc needed to be ready for shock disruptions from Moscow.
■ European Union lawmakers voted to support a plan by the bloc’s executive commission to include natural gas and nuclear power on its list of sustainable activities. Environmentalists accused the EU of “greenwashing.”
■ A Russian official warned the United States could face the “wrath of God” if it works to help establish an international tribunal to investigate Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, denounced the U.S. for what he described as its efforts to “spread chaos and destruction across the world for the sake of ‘true democracy.’”