War in Ukraine, Day 121 | Ukrainian forces were ordered to withdraw from Sievierodonetsk

(Kyiv) The Ukrainians ordered their forces to withdraw from the strategic city of Sievierodonetsk on Friday, a sign of Moscow’s progress towards its objective of total conquest of Donbass (East), the day after the validation by the Union of Kyiv’s candidacy.

In the south under Russian control, an official of the occupation administration was killed in an attack, according to the pro-Russian authorities. This is the first time that they have announced the death of one of their own in this type of attack, which is on the increase.

On Friday morning, Serguiï Gaïdaï, governor of the province of Luhansk (East), where Sievierodonetsk is located, announced on Telegram that the Ukrainian armed forces had “received the order” to withdraw from the city.

Bombarded by Russian forces for weeks, Sievierodonetsk is a crucial step in their plan to conquer all of Donbass, an industrial basin in eastern Ukraine already partly held by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.

“It no longer makes sense to stay in positions that have been constantly bombarded for months” in Sievierodonetsk, while the city has been “almost reduced to ruins” by the continuous bombardments, explained the governor.

Sievierodonetsk and its twin city Lysytchansk, located just across the Donets River, are now almost surrounded by Russian forces, which are eating away at more territory every day.

Mykolaivka, a town about 20 kilometers southwest of Lysytchansk, is “lost” and in the hands of the Russian army, said Mr Gaïdaï, adding that the Russians were now trying to “conquer Girské”, a neighboring town .

But in the opposite camp, a representative of the pro-Russian separatists, Andrei Marochko, said on Telegram on Friday that all the villages in the Girské area were already under Russian or pro-Russian control.

“Summer will be hot”

Thursday, AFP journalists who had left Lysytchansk had to jump twice from their car and lie on the ground on the main access road to the city, bombarded by Russian forces with Grad missiles.

Many vehicles were then on the road: truck-trailers loaded with tanks, armored vehicles, jeeps and ambulances going back and forth.

Lyssychansk seemed to be preparing for the arrival of the Russians on Thursday. The main police station was closed, after being bombed on Monday. The entrance steps were full of debris and the walls badly damaged. “People say that all the police have left,” a firefighter told AFP when questioned at the main municipal barracks.

At the entrance to the city, partly deprived of water, gas and electricity, Ukrainian soldiers were digging trenches, apparently in preparation for a Russian assault.

Another sign of Ukrainian military difficulties, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Donetsk, the other province of Donbass, located further south, told AFP on Thursday that “no city” in the area under his administration was “safe” for its inhabitants, the fighting being too violent.

In Kherson (South), one of the few large cities in the country conquered by the Russians in this conflict, “the head of the youth and sports family department, Dmitry Savlutchenko, is dead”, indicated on Telegram the deputy head of the pro-Russian administration, Kirill Stremoussov, denouncing, like Moscow, “an act of terrorism”.

According to the local administration, the official, killed in the explosion of his car, was the victim of a “targeted” attack.

In recent weeks, Ukrainian forces have returned to the offensive in the area in an attempt to retake territories lost since the February 24 invasion. And the attacks targeting occupation officials, several of whom were injured, multiplied in parallel in the region of Kherson and the neighboring region of Zaporijjia.

Russia has also intensified its offensive on the large city of Kharkiv, in the Northeast, for several days.

An AFP team on the spot heard loud explosions in the city center at night, then noted on Friday morning that the Polytechnic Institute of Kharkiv had been hit by several missiles. All the windows of the Soviet building were shattered and a huge reinforced concrete gymnasium was destroyed. Its roof partially collapsed. According to a soldier present, there were no casualties.

The Russians “thought there might be something military about it but there was not,” he said.

The Russian army claimed on Friday to have killed with “high precision weapons” more than 200 foreign mercenaries and a hundred Ukrainian nationalists in the regions of Mykolaiv (South) and Kharkiv.

Undermined by Russian firepower, Ukrainian forces are now pinning their hopes on the arrival of heavy weapons relentlessly demanded from Western allies, such as the American Himars multiple rocket launchers, whose arrival Kyiv announced on Thursday in predicting that “the summer will be hot for the Russian occupiers”.

At the border, the number of Ukrainians arriving in Poland this week exceeds that of returns, reversing the trend observed for more than a month, we learned from Polish border guards on Friday.

This development comes as Russian forces continue to bombard major cities and the destruction of some large businesses, such as the Kremenchuk oil refinery, leaves thousands of people without work, the leader of the AFP told AFP. Ukrainian organization in Poland “Euromajdan Warsaw”, Natalia Panchenko.