Reinforced Russian troops backed by airstrikes pummelled a portion of eastern Ukraine on Sunday, blowing up bridges and shelling apartment buildings as they fought to capture two cities that would put a contested province under Moscow's control, Ukrainian officials said.
Russian and Ukrainian forces battled street-by-street in Sievierodonetsk and neighbouring Lysychansk, regional governor Serhiy Haidai said. Russian strikes killed four people, including a mother and child, in the nearby village of Hirske, Haidai said.
The cities are the last major areas of Luhansk province still held by Ukraine. The Russian attacks are central to the Kremlin's reduced wartime goal of seizing the entire Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for eight years and established self-proclaimed republics.
Russia also escalated attacks in Donetsk, the other province that makes up the Donbas, the Ukrainian military said as the war reached its 101st day.
Reflecting the close combat, Russian and Ukrainian military officers blamed each other for a fire that destroyed a 1912 wooden church at the Sviatohirsk monastery, one of Ukraine's holiest Orthodox Christian sites. The sprawling, 16th-century monastery, which sits on the bank of the Siverskiy Donets River, has been hit several times previously during the war, most recently on Thursday, when three monks were killed.
In his video address on Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of “deliberately and systematically destroying Ukrainian culture and its historical heritage, along with social infrastructure like housing and everything needed for normal life.”
He said 113 churches have been damaged or destroyed during the invasion, including some that survived the battles of World War II.
Clashes between troops in the city of Severodonetsk have resulted in brutal street fighting. (Source: 1News)
In recent days Russian forces have focused on capturing Sievierodonetsk, which had a pre-war population of about 100,000. At one point they held 90% of the city, but Ukrainian soldiers clawed back some ground, Haidai reported Saturday. Zelenskyy described the city’s situation as “extremely difficult” on Sunday.
Western military analysts said Russia was devoting significant troop strength and firepower to what British officials called a “creeping advance” in the Donbas.
“The combined use of air and artillery strikes has been a key factor in Russia’s recent tactical successes in the region,” the U.K. Ministry of Defence said in a Sunday assessment. The ministry warned that after launching so many guided missiles, Russia was employing unguided missiles that have “almost certainly caused substantial collateral damage and civilian casualties.”
The Ukrainian military reported that it repulsed nine attacks in the Donbas over 24 hours. The claim could not be independently verified.
While Russian forces are concentrated on the Donbas, Ukraine has staged counterattacks to try to regain territory in the south.
After seizing most of the Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk regions, as well as the port city of Mariupol, Moscow has installed local administrators, offered residents Russian passports and taken other steps to consolidate its hold on occupied areas.
Russian shelling killed at least three civilians in the Black Sea port city of Mykolaiv, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevich said Sunday.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Russian-installed officials and troops face growing resistance among the local population and “an increase in partisan activity in southern Ukraine.”
The institute cited accounts on Russian Telegram channels of threats against locals who received Russian passports.
The Ukrainian Centre for National Resistance, which established a website to advise people on sabotage and other techniques, said Kherson residents were encouraged to burn down a Russian passport centre.
The Ukrainian military noted with approval the trouble that occupation authorities were encountering, saying Russian-installed leaders in Kherson were wearing bulletproof vests and traveling in armoured vehicles.
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