Russia has intensified its offensive in the Donbass region, in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian guerrillas are also active. The Ukrainian army accuses the Russian army of attacking more than twenty cities in the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces in the last 24 hours, the self-proclaimed pro-Russian people’s republics that the Kremlin has recognized and has proposed to occupy in its entirety.
The bombings have killed at least three civilians, says the military source, and an average of about 200 Ukrainian soldiers (500 wounded), according to the adviser to the Ukrainian president, Mykhaylo Podolyak. Most of the bombs have fallen on Severodonetsk, where street fighting continues. The fate of this entire region of eastern Ukraine depends on the outcome of the bloody battle being waged in the industrial zone of this city, where the Ukrainians are entrenched. Its mayor, Oleksandr Stryuk, estimates that there are still some 10,000 civilians trapped, about a tenth of its pre-war population.
The other heavily bombed city is the nearby town of Lisichansk, on the opposite bank of the Siverskyi Donetsk River. They are the last Ukrainian-controlled towns in Luhansk province, which Russia is determined to seize as one of its main war targets. There the Russian army is looking for weak points in the Ukrainian defenses.
“Russia’s strategic goal is the complete destruction of Ukraine… They will not let us live in peace,” Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk warned on Friday. The Russian army has changed its combat strategy in its Donbass offensive compared to the start of the war. Now it carries out massive bombing raids that allow Moscow to reduce the number of casualties and seek to extend the campaign because it believes that this gives it an advantage. Kyiv, on the other hand, fears losing the attention of the West if the war drags on.
In the south, where Russia is trying to assert its dominance in a stretch of occupied territory that encompasses Kherson and Zaporizhia provinces, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said it had seized territory in a counterattack in Kherson province. President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed this in his speech last night: Ukraine had “some positive developments in the Zaporizhia region, where we are succeeding in disrupting the plans of the occupiers.” He did not provide further details and Reuters was unable to independently verify the situation on the ground in these regions.
It is in these occupied southern territories that Russia is having trouble providing basic services to its inhabitants. According to the UK Ministry of Defence, Kherson, the first city to fall to Russian troops at the start of the war, is facing a shortage of medicines and Mariupol, which was besieged for months before falling, is running the risk of a cholera outbreak. Both guarantee Russia the corridor between the eastern region and the province of Crimea, annexed by Vladimir Putin in 2014 after holding a referendum.
Following this precedent, Kremlin-installed representatives in both provinces say they are organizing a referendum to join Russia, a project that could take place in July and which Kyiv opposes.
Nataliya Gumenyuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine, has assured that Russia has 40 cruise missiles aimed at the country from the sea. She did not say how Kyiv obtained the information and Reuters was unable to verify it. “We must be prepared for an increase in missile attacks,” she has said on national television.
