Updated: 11am
Kyiv/Sloviansk, Ukraine
Reuters
Ukraine said on Thursday its forces were holding their positions in intense fighting in the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk and had retaken ground in the south, targetting gains in the biggest swathe of territory seized by Russia since the invasion started.
Russia has concentrated its invasion force around Sievierodonetsk, a small industry city now bombed to ruins. Ukraine says its only hope to turn the tide toward victory is more artillery to offset Russia’s massive firepower.
Ukrainian servicemen wave as they ride atop an armoured fighting vehicle, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on 8th June. PICTURE: Reuters/Stringer
Sievierodonetsk and its twin city Lysychansk on the opposite bank of the Siverskyi Donets river are the last Ukrainian-controlled parts of Luhansk province, which Moscow is determined to seize as one of its principal war objectives.
“They [the Russians] are dying like flies…fierce fighting continues inside Sievierodonetsk,” Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said.
UKRAINE’S ZELENSKIY IMPOSES SANCTIONS ON PUTIN AND HIS ALLIES
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has signed a decree imposing sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, on Russian President Vladimir Putin and dozens of other top Russian officials, his website said on Thursday.
The sanctioned officials included Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, veteran Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.
The sanctions appeared unlikely to have much practical impact beyond the symbolic.
In the early phases of the war, Zelenskiy had been pushing for a meeting with Putin, an idea downplayed by the Kremlin which said there was still much preparatory peace negotiating to be done by their respective delegations.
The peace talks are now frozen and Ukraine is lobbying the European Union to impose a seventh sanctions package on Russia.
“Given that Russia seems to aim to fight in Ukraine to the last Russian, sanctions pressure, of course, needs to be increased,” Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Wednesday.
– MAX HUNDER/Reuters
Gaidai predicted the Russians would try to take advantage of low water levels to cross the Siverskyi Donets river. “We are watching and if anything happens we will act proactively.”
In the south, where Moscow is trying to impose its rule on a tract of occupied territory spanning Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces, Ukraine’s defence ministry said it had captured new ground in a counter-attack in Kherson province.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an evening address that Ukraine also had “some positive developments in the Zaporizhzhia region, where we are succeeding in disrupting the occupiers’ plans.” He did not provide details.
Reuters could not independently verify the situation on the ground in Zaporizhzhia or Kherson. Russian-installed proxies in both provinces say they are planning referendums to join Russia.
Thousands of people have been killed and millions have fled since Moscow launched its “special military operation” to disarm and “denazify” its neighbour on 24th February. Ukraine and its allies call the invasion an unprovoked war of aggression.
“We are staying”
In a rare update from Sievierodonetsk, the commander of Ukraine’s Svoboda National Guard Battalion, Petro Kusyk, said Ukrainians were drawing the Russians into street fighting to neutralise Russia’s artillery advantage.
“Yesterday was successful for us – we launched a counteroffensive and in some areas we managed to push them back one or two blocks. In others they pushed us back, but just by a building or two,” he said in a televised interview.
But he added his forces were suffering from a “catastrophic” lack of counter-battery artillery to fire back at Russia’s guns, and getting such weapons would transform the battlefield.
Sievierodonetsk Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk said around 10,000 civilians were still trapped inside the city – around a tenth of its pre-war population.
Reuters could not verify the situation on the ground in the city.
To the west of Sievierodonetsk, Russia is pushing from the north and south, trying to trap Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region comprising Luhansk and neighbouring Donetsk province.
In Soledar, a salt-mining town near Bakhmut close to the front line, buildings had been blasted into craters.
Remaining residents, mostly elderly, were sheltering in a crowded cellar. Antonina, 65, had ventured out to see her garden. “We are staying. We live here. We were born here,” she sobbed. “When is it all going to end?”
Local residents remove debris from a supermarket in a shopping mall damaged by a Russian missile strike, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Kharkiv, Ukraine on 8th June. PICTURE: Reuters/Ivan Alvarado.
Grain
In the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, one of Russia’s proxies in eastern Ukraine, a court sentenced two Britons and a Moroccan who were captured while fighting for Ukraine to death, Russian news agencies reported.
The court found the three men – Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner and Moroccan Brahim Saadoun – guilty of “mercenary activities and committing actions aimed at seizing power and overthrowing the constitutional order of the DPR”, the Interfax news agency quoted a court official as saying.
Britain slammed the court’s decision as a “sham judgment” with no legitimacy.
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Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest grain and food oil exporters, and international attention has focused in recent weeks on the threat of international famine seen as caused by Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
“Millions of people may starve if the Russian blockade of the Black Sea continues,” Zelenskiy said on Thursday in televised remarks.
Moscow blames the food crisis on Western sanctions restricting its own grain exports. It says it is willing to let Ukrainian ports open for exports if Ukraine removes mines and meets other conditions. Kyiv calls such offers empty promises.
Turkey, a NATO power with good relations with both Kyiv and Moscow, has tried to mediate.
Russia has also been trying to sell grain from areas of Ukraine it seized, activity Kyiv and the West call looting.
Asked if any deal had been reached to sell grain from southern Ukraine to Turkey or a Middle Eastern country, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “So far no agreements have been reached, work is continuing.”
– With reporting by Reuters bureaux
