Kyiv,/Svitlodarsk, Ukraine
Reuters
Advancing Russian forces came closer to surrounding Ukrainian troops in the east, briefly seizing positions on the last highway out of a crucial pair of Ukrainian-held cities before being beaten back, a Ukrainian official said on Thursday.
Three months into its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has abandoned its assault on the capital Kyiv and is trying to consolidate control of the industrial eastern Donbas region, where it has backed a separatist revolt since 2014.
A local woman looks at an apartment building damaged by a Russian military strike, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in the town of Vuhledar, in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on 22nd May. PICTURE: Reuters/Anna Kudriavtseva.
Thousands of troops are attacking from three sides to try to encircle Ukrainian forces in Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk. If the two cities straddling the Siverskiy Donets river fall, nearly all of the Donbas province of Luhansk would be under Russian control.
“Russia has the advantage, but we are doing everything we can,” said General Oleksiy Gromov, deputy chief of the main operations department of Ukraine’s general staff.
WHO CONDEMNS RUSSIA’S AGGRESSION IN UKRAINE IN RARE VOTE, REJECTS MOSCOW’S COUNTER-PROPOSAL
The World Health Organization assembly passed a motion on Thursday condemning the regional health emergency triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rejected a rival resolution from Moscow that made no mention of its own role in the crisis.
The original proposal, brought by the United States and some 50 others, condemned Russia’s actions but stopped short of immediately suspending its voting rights at the UN health agency as some had earlier sought.
Both resolutions expressed “grave concerns over the ongoing health emergency in and around Ukraine”, but only the Western-led proposal says the emergency is “triggered by the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine”.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva Yevheniia Filipenko called Russia’s counter-proposal a “twisted alternative reality”. “The Russian Federation has failed in its cynical attempt to deceive this forum,” she said of the outcome.
Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN in Geneva Alexander Alimov called the Western proposal “politicised, one-sided and biased” versus its own “constructive” proposal. “Manipulating the WHO is not acceptable,” he said of the result.
China supported Moscow in the two votes, with its envoy Yang Zhilun saying the WHO was the wrong forum for discussing Ukraine’s health problems.
The twin votes, rare in WHO meetings, are unlikely to have an immediate impact on the conflict but are seen as an increasingly rare multilateral endorsement of Kyiv’s position more than three months after the 24th February start of Russia’s invasion.
But while the Western-backed proposal passed with 88 votes for and 12 against, it was not resounding and there were dozens of abstentions and absences among the WHO’s 194 members.
WHO Europe member states have already passed a resolution that could result in the closure of Russia’s regional office.
Diplomats said this time they were wary of pushing Russia too far and prompting it to quit, given the need to cooperate with WHO on disease surveillance. Support for political condemnations of Russia has also faded, they said, with Western countries seen by some as too narrowly-focused on targeting Russia at the expense of other issues.
The resolutions come alongside a report from WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, which highlights the “devastating” health consequences of the Russian invasion, including 235 attacks on healthcare as well as wider mass casualties and life-threatening disruptions to health services.
Moscow calls its actions a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and rid it of what it calls anti-Russian nationalism fomented by the West. Ukraine and the West say Russia launched an unprovoked war of aggression
– EMMA FARGE, JENNIFER RIGBY and MRINALIKA ROY/Reuters
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said around 50 Russian soldiers had reached the highway and “managed to gain a foothold”, even setting up a checkpoint.
“The checkpoint was broken, they were thrown back…the Russian army does not control the route now, but they are shelling it,” he said. It was possible Ukrainian troops would leave “one settlement, maybe two. We need to win the war, not the battle,” he said.
“It is clear that our boys are slowly retreating to more fortified positions – we need to hold back this horde,” Gaidai added.
Western military analysts see the battle for the two cities as a potential turning point in the war, now that Russia has redefined its principal objective as capturing the east.
“Sobering”
Reuters journalists in Russian-held territory further south saw proof of Moscow’s advance in Svitlodarsk, where Ukrainian forces withdrew earlier this week.
The town is now firmly under control of pro-Russian fighters, who have occupied the local government building and hung a Soviet hammer and sickle flag at the door.
Reuters drone footage of the nearby abandoned battlefield showed craters pockmarking a green field surrounded by wrecked buildings. Pro-Russian fighters were milling about in trenches. Ukraine’s military said 50 towns in Donetsk and Luhansk came under shelling on Thursday, with nine civilians killed.
Russia’s recent gains in the Donbas follow the surrender of Ukraine’s garrison in Mariupol last week, and suggest a shift in momentum after weeks in which Ukrainian forces had advanced near Kharkiv in the northeast.
“Recent Russian gains offer a sobering check on expectations for the near term,” tweeted defence analyst Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies at the US-based CNA thinktank.
Russian troops have broken through Ukrainian lines at Popasna, south of Sievierodonetsk, and are threatening to encircle Ukrainian forces, he wrote.
Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Vadym Denisenko told a briefing 25 Russian battalions were attempting to surround the Ukrainian forces.
The head of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valeriy Zaluzhny, called on Telegram for more Western arms, particularly “weapons that will allow us to hit the enemy at a big distance”.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, later warned that any supplies of weapons that could reach Russian territory would be a “a serious step towards unacceptable escalation”.
Homes destroyed
A few weeks ago, it was Ukrainian forces that were advancing, pushing Russian troops back from the outskirts of Kharkiv towards the Russian border.
But Moscow appears to have halted its retreat there, retaining a strip of territory along the frontier and preventing Ukrainian troops from cutting Russian supply lines that run east of the city to the Donbas.
Russian shelling killed at least nine civilians, including a five-month-old infant, and wounded 17 in Kharkiv, Regional Governor Oleh Synehubov said, as Russian forces dug in and maintained control of positions in villages to the north.
“It’s loud here but it’s home at least,” said Maryna Karabierova, 38, as another blast could be heard nearby. She had returned to Kharkiv after fleeing to Poland and Germany earlier in the war. “It can happen at any time, at night, during the day: this is what life is here.”
Russia did not immediately comment on the situation in Kharkiv. It has denied targeting civilians in what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
The Donbas advance has been backed by massive artillery bombardment. Ukraine’s armed forces said more than 40 towns in the region had been shelled in the past 24 hours, destroying or damaging 47 civilian sites, including 38 homes and a school.
Ukrainian mariners patrol an area, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, near a frontline in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on 26th May. PICTURE: Anna Kudriavtseva
Escalation
Western countries led by the United States have provided Ukraine with long-range weaponry, including M777 howitzers from Washington and Harpoon anti-ship missiles from Denmark.
Washington is even considering providing Kyiv with a rocket system that can have a range of hundreds of kilometres, and has held discussions with Kyiv about the danger of escalation if it strikes deep inside Russia, US and diplomatic officials told Reuters.
“We have concerns about escalation and yet still do not want to put geographic limits or tie their hands too much with the stuff we’re giving them,” said one US official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said during a question and answer session over Twitter that “without multiple launch rocket systems, we won’t be able to push them back.” He said that if Russia were to request a ceasefire, “we will think twice, three times before agreeing to it”.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Moscow expects Ukraine to accept its demands at any future peace talks. It wants Kyiv to recognise Russian sovereignty over the Crimea peninsula Moscow seized in 2014, and the independence of separatist-claimed territory.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Putin must not be permitted to impose peace terms.
“There will be no dictated peace,” Scholz said in Davos. “Ukraine will not accept this, and neither will we.”
– Additional reporting by MAX HUNDER in Kyiv, MARI SAITO in Kharkiv and Reuters journalists in Svitlodarsk.
