Ukraine war: Russia intensifies battle for Donbas as forces encircle eastern key city

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The battle for control over Ukraine’s Donbas region intensified on Sunday as Russian troops fought to encircle a key frontline city in the country’s east.

The Kremlin claimed today it had destroyed a shipment of Western-supplied weapons bound for the eastern region, in a blow to Kyiv‘s forces that are at risk of becoming trapped if they are unable to repel the advance of Vladimir Putin‘s armies. 

As part of Russia’s efforts to take control of Donbas, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Russia’s only operational company of BMP-T Terminator tank support vehicles tanks, ‘has likely been deployed to the Sievierodonetsk axis of the Donbas offensive.’

However, with a maximum of 10 of the vehicles – which are designed to protect main battle tanks – deployed, the ministry said ‘they are unlikely to have a significant impact on the campaign.’

Ukraine’s forces have had great success destroying Russia’s slow-moving military hardware by using more nimble weaponry, such as hand-held missile launchers and drones. Estimates place Russian tank losses in the thousands.

The cities of Sievierodonetsk and Sloviansk, in the Donetsk region, are critical to Russia’s objective of capturing all of eastern Ukraine.

Both have seen fierce fighting last month after Moscow’s troops backed off from Kyiv to refocus their efforts on Donbas, in a reduction of its military ambitions.

‘The situation in Donbas is extremely difficult,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address on Saturday.

The Russian army was trying to attack the cities of Sloviansk and Sievierodonetsk, but Ukrainian forces were holding off their advance, he said.

Sievierodonetsk is the main frontline city under Ukrainian control in the Luhansk region, which together with the Donetsk region makes up the Donbas. 

Zelensky described the bombardment of Severodonetsk as ‘brutal and absolutely pointless’, as residents cowering in basements described an unending ordeal of terror. The city forms part of the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in Lugansk.

‘They completely ruined Rubizhne, Vonokvakha, just as they did Mariupol,’ Zelensky said Friday, adding that the Russians were ‘trying to do the same with Severodonetsk and many other cities’.

The region’s governor Serhii Haidai said the only functioning hospital in Sievierodonetsk has just three doctors and supplies for 10 days.

Russian shelling killed 12 civilians and injured 40 more elsewhere in the region, Haidai said, in yet another example of Putin’s forces killing Ukrainians.

The governor said on Sunday that the city was under attack from four directions, but that Russian soldiers had so-far failed to get into the city. 

Russian-backed separatists already controlled swathes of territory in Luhansk and Donetsk province before the Russian president launched the February 24 invasion, but Moscow wants to seize the last remaining Ukrainian-held territory in Donbas.

Meanwhile, Russian defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed its forces destroyed a shipment of western-supplied weapons in northern Ukraine, that were sent to reinforce Ukraine’s on-going resistance in the Donbas.

Konashenkov said the weapons, which were being moved near the Malin Railway station – around 80 miles from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv – were destroyed by sea-launched Kalibr cruise missiles.  

Konashenkov also reported Putin’s soldiers destroyed a Ukrainian special-operations base near Odesa, Ukraine’s main Black Sea port.

A day earlier, Konashenkov announced the Russian army had ‘totally liberated’ the vast Azovstal steelworks in the strategic port city of Mariupol in southeast Ukraine after the last Ukrainian soldiers inside surrendered.

The end of fighting in Mariupol, the biggest city Russia has captured, gives Russian President Vladimir Putin a rare victory after a series of setbacks in nearly three months of combat.

Full control of Mariupol gives Russia command of a land route linking the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014, with mainland Russia and areas of eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russia separatists.

With Russia claiming to have taken prisoner nearly 2,500 Ukrainian fighters from the besieged Mariupol steel plant, concerns grew about their fate as a Moscow-backed separatist leader vowed they would face tribunals. 

The Azovstal steel plant, which for weeks was the last holdout in Mariupol and a symbol of Ukrainian tenacity in the strategic port city, now in ruins with more than 20,000 residents feared dead. 

The seizure gives Russian Putin a badly wanted victory in the war he began nearly three months ago. 

The Russian Defense Ministry released video of Ukrainian soldiers being detained after announcing that its forces had removed the last holdouts from the Mariupol plant’s extensive underground tunnels. It said a total of 2,439 had surrendered.

Family members of the fighters, who came from a variety of military and law enforcement units, have pleaded for them to be given rights as prisoners of war and eventually returned to Ukraine. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Saturday that Ukraine ‘will fight for the return’ of every one of them.

Denis Pushilin, the pro-Kremlin head of an area of eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, said the captured fighters included some foreign nationals, though he did not provide details. 

He said they were sure to face a tribunal. Russian officials and state media have sought to characterize the fighters as neo-Nazis and criminals.

Mariupol, which is part of the Donbas, was blockaded early in the war and became a frightening example to people elsewhere in the country of the hunger, terror and death they might face if the Russians surrounded their communities.

The seaside steelworks, occupying some 4 square miles, were a battleground for weeks. Drawing Russian airstrikes, artillery and tank fire, the dwindling group of outgunned Ukrainian fighters held out with the help of airdrops that Zelensky said cost the lives of many ‘absolutely heroic’ helicopter pilots.

The Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday released video of Russian troops taking into custody Serhiy Volynskyy, the commander of the Ukrainian Navy’s 36th Special Marine Brigade, which was one of the main forces defending the steel plant. 

The Associated Press has not been able to independently verify the date, location and conditions of the video.

With Russia controlling the city, Ukrainian authorities are likely to face delays in documenting evidence of alleged Russian atrocities in Mariupol, including the bombings of a maternity hospital and a theater where hundreds of civilians had taken cover.

Satellite images in April showed what appeared to be mass graves just outside Mariupol, where local officials accused Russia of concealing the slaughter by burying up to 9,000 civilians.

An estimated 100,000 of the 450,000 people who resided in Mariupol before the war remain. Many, trapped by Russia’s siege, were left without food, water and electricity.

The Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol warned Saturday the city is facing a health and sanitation ‘catastrophe’ from mass burials in shallow pits across the ruined city as well as the breakdown of sewage systems. 

Vadim Boychenko said summer rains threaten to contaminate water sources as he pressed Russian forces to allow residents to safely leave the city.

‘In addition to the humanitarian catastrophe created by the (Russian) occupiers and collaborators, the city is on the verge of an outbreak of infectious diseases,’ he said on the messaging app Telegram.

Meanwhile, Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak ruled out agreeing to a ceasefire and said Kyiv would not accept any deal with Moscow that involved ceding territory. 

Making concessions would backfire on Ukraine because Russia would hit back harder after any break in fighting, he said.

‘The war will not stop (after any concessions). It will just be put on pause for some time,’ he told Reuters in an interview in the heavily guarded presidential office, where some of the windows and corridors are protected by sandbags.

‘After a while, with renewed intensity, the Russians will build up their weapons, manpower and work on their mistakes, modernise a little, fire many generals and they’ll start a new offensive, even more bloody and large-scale.’

Recent calls for an immediate ceasefire have come from U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

Podolyak dismissed the calls – that would involve Russian forces remaining in territory they have occupied in Ukraine’s south and east – as ‘very strange’.

Both sides say peace talks have stagnated. Each blames the other.

However, a ceasefire would play into the Kremlin’s hands, Podolyak said.

‘They want to lock in some kind of military successes. There will definitely be no military successes given the help from our Western partners,’ he said.

‘It would be good if the European and U.S. elites understand to the end: Russia can’t be left halfway because they will (develop) a ‘revanchist’ mood and be even more cruel … They must be defeated, be subjected to a painful defeat, as painful as possible.’

Recent weeks have seen Russia forced out from the outskirts of Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, in what was their fastest retreat since being pushed out of the north and Kyiv region at the end of March.

However they have re-taken some of their lost ground in Kharkiv and still control a large swathe of the south and east, while the end of the fighting in Mariupol means that that territory is now largely unbroken.

Footage shared on Telegram on Saturday appeared to show the moment a Russian Iskander-M strikes a Ukrainian position near Petrovskoye, in Kharkiv.

In the village of Vilkhivka, also in Kharkiv, and in nearby Bakhmut, images from Friday show levelled houses and traumatised residents as they returned to take stock of the damage. 

Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of the Luhansk region, said in a social media post early on Saturday that Russia was trying to destroy Sievierodonetsk, with fighting taking place on the outskirts of the city.

‘Shelling continues from morning to the evening and also throughout the night,’ Gaidai said in a video post on the Telegram messaging app.

Despite losing ground elsewhere in recent weeks, Russian forces have advanced on the Luhansk front.

‘This will be the critical next few weeks of the conflict,’ said Mathieu Boulegue, an expert at London’s Chatham House think tank. 

‘And it depends on how effective they are at conquering Sievierodonetsk and the lands across it.’

And in a sign that Russia plans on ramping up its war effort, the parliament in Moscow said it would consider letting Russians over 40 and foreigners over 30 join the military. 

However in its intelligence update on Saturday, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said Russia risks losing ‘operational effectiveness’ due to its drones being repeatedly show down or electrically jammed. 

It said Putin’s forces have been using drones to identify targets for combat jets or artillery, a practice it ‘refined in Syria.’ 

It added: ‘Crewed Russian aircraft mostly continue to avoid conducting sorties over Ukrainian territory, likely because of the threat from intact Ukrainian air defence missiles systems. 

‘If Russia continues to lsoe UAVs [drones] at its current rate, Russian force intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability will be further degraded, negatively impacting operational effectiveness.’ 

On Friday, a former spy and commander – who was instrumental in starting the original conflict – said Russia has virtually no hope of winning its war in Ukraine even if it manages to seize the whole of Donbas in the coming weeks.

Igor Girkin – who goes by the nom-de-guerre Igor Strelkov, meaning ‘shooter’ – has given a withering assessment of Putin’s war effort, saying that Russian units are suffering ‘huge losses’ by ‘banging their heads against’ deeply entrenched Ukrainian troops, and are being led by commanders who ‘leave much to be desired.’

Despite Russia making piecemeal gains on the Donbas front in recent days – capturing towns around Popansa and pushing to encircle Severodonetsk – Strelkov says Ukraine is fast-mobilising new troops, rearming using Western weapons, and digging into new defensive positions that will be hard to overrun.

It is ‘meaningless to hope for victory’ without a general mobilisation of Russia’s army, Strelkov argues, which Putin refuses to do because he is being molly-coddled by his inner circle into believing victory is still possible. 

‘As long he remains shielded from reality ‘nothing will change, and when it does change… it will be too late to do anything.’

Once the Russian offensive grinds to a halt – something Strelkov predicts could happen as soon as mid-June – Ukraine will then switch to counter attacks as it did around Kyiv and Kharkiv, forcing Putin’s commanders on to the back foot and likely pushing their badly-mauled units backwards – perhaps to their own borders.

But even if no counter-attacks come, Russia will be faced with the prospect of trying to hold a long front line against well-armed and newly-reinforced Ukrainian defenders who will refuse to give up the fight, all the while Russia’s economy will flatline under sanctions.