Ukrainian army to leave battered city to avoid encirclement

Kyiv, June 24

After weeks of ferocious fighting, Ukrainian forces will retreat from a besieged city in the country’s east to avoid encirclement, a regional governor said Friday.

The city of Sievierodonetsk, the administrative centre of the Luhansk region, has faced relentless Russian bombardment.

Ukrainian troops fought the Russians in house-to-house battles before retreating to a huge chemical factory on the city’s edge, where they holed up in its sprawling underground structures.

In recent days, Russian forces have made gains around Sievierodonetsk and the neighbouring city of Lysychansk, on a steep bank across the river, in a bid to encircle Ukrainian forces.

Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said that the Ukrainian troops have been given the order to leave Sievierodonetsk to prevent that.

“Regrettably, we will have to pull our troops out of Sievierodonetsk,” Haidai told The Associated Press.

“It makes no sense to stay at the destroyed positions, and the number of killed in action has been growing.” He said that the Ukrainian soldiers have “received the order to retreat from Sievierodonetsk to new positions in fortified areas and continue resistance from there.” Haidai noted that Ukrainian troops still remain in Sievierodonetsk, facing massive Russian bombardment that has destroyed 80 per cent of buildings.

Haidai said the Russians were also advancing toward Lysychansk from Zolote and Toshkivka, adding that Russian reconnaissance units conducted forays on the city edges but were driven out by its defenders.

The governor added that a bridge on a highway leading to Lysychansk was badly damaged in a Russian airstrike and became unusable for trucks.

The Russian Defense Ministry declared Friday that four Ukrainian battalions and a unit of “foreign mercenaries” totalling about 2,000 soldiers have been “fully blocked” near Hirske and Zolote, south of Lysychansk.

The claim couldn’t be independently verified.

Following a botched attempt to capture Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in the early stage of the invasion that started Feb. 24, Russian forces have shifted focus in the war to the Donbas region, where the Ukrainian forces have fought Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.

The Russian military controls about 95 per cent of Luhansk province and about half of neighbouring Donetsk province, the two areas that make up the Donbas.

After repeated requests to its Western allies for heavier weaponry to counter Russia’s edge in firepower, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said a response had arrived in the form of medium-range American rocket launchers.

A U.S. defense official confirmed Wednesday that all four of the promised High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, were in the hands of Ukrainian forces but said it wasn’t clear if they have been used yet.

The U.S. approved providing the precision-guided systems at the end of May, and once they were in the region, Ukraine’s forces needed about three weeks of training to operate them.

The rockets can travel about 70 kilometers.

The U.S. will send an addition $450 million in military aid to Ukraine, including four more of the medium-range rocket systems, ammunition and other supplies, U.S. officials announced Thursday.

IN OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

An official with the pro-Moscow administration in the southern city of Kherson that was captured by Russian troops early in the invasion was killed in an explosion Friday.

The pro-Russian regional administration in Kherson said that Dmitry Savlyuchenko died when his vehicle exploded in what it described as a “terror attack.” There was no immediate claim of responsibility.  AP        

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