Explosions rocked Ukraine’s capital Kyiv early on Sunday as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the battle for the eastern city of Severodonetsk was being waged street by street.
“Several explosions in Darnytsky and Dniprovsky districts of the city. Services are extinguishing,” mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram shortly after air raid warnings sounded in Kyiv and several other cities.
“There are currently no dead from missile strikes on infrastructure. One wounded was hospitalised. The services are still working in the affected areas.”
Separately, at least 11 civilians were reported killed in the Luhansk region where Severodonetsk is located, the nearby Donetsk region and in the southern city of Mykolaiv.
“The situation in Severodonetsk, where street fighting continues, remains extremely difficult,” Mr Zelenskyy said in his daily address Saturday evening.
Cities in the eastern Donbas area at the heart of the Russian offensive were under “constant air strikes, artillery and missile fire” but Ukrainian forces were holding their ground, he said.
Severodonetsk is the largest city still in Ukrainian hands in the Luhansk region of the Donbas, where Russian forces have been gradually advancing in recent weeks after retreating or being repelled from other areas, including around the capital Kyiv.
Russia’s army claimed some Ukrainian military units were withdrawing from Severodonetsk but mayor Oleksandr Striuk said Ukrainian forces were fighting to retake the city.
“Our soldiers have managed to redeploy, build a line of defence,” he said in an interview broadcast on Telegram Saturday.
“We are currently doing everything necessary to re-establish total control” of the city.
Earlier, Luhansk regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said the Russians had captured most of Severodonetsk, but that Ukraine’s forces were pushing them back.
“The Russian army, as we understand, is throwing all its power, all its reserves in this direction,” said Mr Gaiday.
“Russians are blowing up the bridges, so that we cannot supply reinforcements to our boys, who are in Severodonetsk,” he added.
Russian artillery is slamming Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region with fierce fighting over the city of Severodonetsk, but the local governor says there has been some progress in pushing back invading forces. Source: AFP / ARIS MESSINIS
For its part, Moscow claims to have destroyed two Ukrainian command centres and six ammunition depots in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
“Ukrainian forces are successfully slowing down Russian operations to encircle Ukrainian positions in Luhansk Oblast as well as Russian frontal assaults in Severodonetsk through prudent and effective local counterattacks in Severodonetsk”, the US-based Institute for the Study of War said in an assessment late Saturday.
‘Put Russia in its place’
Tens of thousands of people have been killed, millions forced to flee and towns turned into rubble since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an all-out assault on his pro-Western neighbour on 24 February.
Western powers have imposed increasingly stringent sanctions on Russia and supplied arms to Ukraine, but divisions have emerged on how to react.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday Mr Putin had committed a “fundamental error” but that Russia should not be “humiliated” so that a diplomatic solution could be found.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reacted Saturday by saying such calls “only humiliate France” and any country taking a similar position.
“It is Russia that humiliates itself. We all better focus on how to put Russia in its place,” he said.
Despite diplomatic efforts, the conflict has raged in the south and east of the country.
Ukrainian officials on Saturday announced the death of four foreign military volunteers fighting Russian forces but did not specify when or under what circumstances they died.
The International Legion of Defence of Ukraine, an official volunteer brigade, named the men and published photos of them, saying they were from Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and France.
Medecins Sans Frontieres evacuates injured civilians by train from Krasnoarmeisk, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Source: AP / Pavel Nemecek
The deaths of the two men named from the Netherlands and Australia had already been reported, and France’s foreign ministry said Friday that a French volunteer fighter had been killed in combat.
Ukraine also reported two victims from a Russian missile strike on Odesa in the southwest, without specifying if they were dead or injured.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had struck a “deployment point for foreign mercenaries” in the village of Dachne in the Odesa region.
It also claimed a missile strike in the northeastern Sumy region on an artillery training centre with “foreign instructors”.
Fears over food
Apart from the human toll, the conflict has caused widespread damage to Ukraine’s cultural heritage.
On Saturday, Ukrainian officials reported a large Orthodox wooden church, a popular pilgrim site, was on fire and blamed Russia.
Moscow continues to prove “its inability to be part of the civilised world,” Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko said in a statement.
Members of a medical rescue team gather inside their temporary base in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine. Source: AP / Bernat Armangue
Russia’s defence ministry blamed “Ukrainian nationalists” for the blaze and said its forces were not operating in the area.
Russian troops now occupy a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, and Moscow has imposed a blockade on its Black Sea ports, sparking fears of a global food crisis. Ukraine and Russia are among the top wheat exporters in the world.
The United Nations said it was leading intense negotiations with Russia to allow Ukraine’s grain harvest to leave the country.
Mr Putin said Friday there was “no problem” to export grain from Ukraine, via Kyiv- or Moscow-controlled ports or even through central Europe.
The UN has warned African countries, which normally import over half of their wheat consumption from Ukraine and Russia, face an “unprecedented” crisis.
Food prices in Africa have already exceeded those in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings and the 2008 food riots.
The head of the African Union, Senegalese President Macky Sall, said Saturday he intended to visit Ukraine after meeting with Putin the day before to discuss the wheat shortage.
Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov repeated the government’s appeal for the swift delivery of heavy artillery in a telecast address to the Globsec-2022 forum on international security Saturday.
If Kyiv gets the equipment they had asked for, he said, “I cannot forecast definitely what month we will kick them out, but I hope — and it’s absolutely a realistic plan — to do it this year.”
