War in Ukraine, Day 129 | Heavy fighting in Lysychansk, which separatists claim to surround

(Sloviansk) Fierce fighting raged on Saturday in Lyssychansk, a city in eastern Ukraine at the heart of the battle for control of Donbass, which pro-Russian separatists say they have “totally” surrounded, a claim denied by the army Ukrainian.

“Fighting is raging around Lyssychansk. Fortunately, the city is not surrounded and it is under the control of the Ukrainian army,” Ruslan Mouzychuk, spokesman for the National Guard of Ukraine, told television.

The Moscow-backed separatists had claimed shortly before that they had “totally” surrounded Lysytchansk.

“Today the Luhansk People’s Militia [l’armée séparatiste, NDLR] and the Russian armed forces have occupied the last strategic heights, which allows us to affirm that the locality of Lysytchansk is completely surrounded, “said Andrei Marochko, a representative of this armed force, quoted by the Russian news agency TASS .

Lyssychansk is the last major city not yet in Russian hands in the Luhansk region, one of two provinces in Donbass, a largely Russian-speaking industrial region in eastern Ukraine, partly controlled by separatists pro-Russian since 2014 and which Moscow now intends to conquer entirely.

The city, which had nearly 100,000 inhabitants before the war, is twin to that of Sievierodonetsk, conquered last week by Moscow after the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces after a battle lasting several weeks. The two towns are separated by the Donets, the main tributary of the Don.

The capture of Lyssytchansk would allow the Russian army to advance towards Sloviansk (about sixty kilometers to the west) and Kramatorsk, two other large cities of Donbass located in the Donetsk region.

On Saturday morning, the Ukrainian general staff claimed to have repelled a Russian offensive towards a locality a few kilometers west of Lyssytchansk with the aim of encircling the city.

Friday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that the situation remained “extremely difficult” on the spot for the Ukrainian forces.

“Heavy Losses”

In Sloviansk, which has been under rocket fire day and night for at least a week, hitting residential areas, at least four civilians have been killed and 12 injured since Friday morning, according to the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko.

A rocket attack notably hit inhabited houses on Friday evening, causing the death of a woman who was in her garden and injuring her husband, a neighbor told an AFP journalist on Saturday, showing the damage caused to buildings. neighborhood.

The city’s mayor, Vadym Liakh, accused Russian forces of using cluster munitions, banned by international treaties to which Moscow is not a party.

Further north, in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, “the morning […] was particularly turbulent,” said regional governor Oleg Sinegoubov, according to whom missiles hit a part of the city without causing any casualties.

Igor Konashenkov, the spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said that the Russian Air Force hit the local tractor factory in Kharkiv where troops and equipment of the 10^e Ukrainian mountain assault brigade.

On the southern front, according to Konashenkov, the Russian army hit with artillery fire or airstrikes 39 command centers and two ammunition depots near Mykolaiv. The Ukrainian regional governor, Vitaly Kim, indicated that explosions had been heard in the morning and that the authorities were trying to measure the consequences.

In general, Mr. Konashenkov said, “the enemy is suffering heavy losses on all fronts”.

“Deliberate Terror”

On Friday evening, Mr. Zelensky had accused Moscow of using “terror […] deliberate”, after the death, according to the Ukrainian military and civil authorities, of at least 21 people, including a 12-year-old boy, in a strike of three Russian missiles which destroyed “a large building” and “a tourist complex” in Sergiïvka , a locality on the Black Sea coast, about 80 kilometers southwest of Odessa, in southern Ukraine.

Local authorities assure that “there was not the slightest military target” at the location of the strikes.

In response to the Ukrainian accusations, the Kremlin assured that “the armed forces of Russia do not operate on civilian targets” in Ukraine, a reaction described as “inhuman and cynical” by Berlin.

According to Kyiv, the strikes on Sergiyivka injured 38 people, including five children, two of them in serious condition.

According to the Ukrainian army, the weapons used against Sergiyivka are Soviet cruise missiles dating from the Cold War and designed to strike a carrier battle group, the same type that struck a shopping center in Kremenchuk (central Ukraine) on Monday. 200 km from the front) and having left 21 dead according to a new report provided on Saturday by the mayor of the city, Vitali Maletsky.

On the diplomatic front, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter that he had discussed with European Union Foreign Minister Josep Borrell “new measures after Ukraine became a candidate country to the EU” at the end of June, after the approval of the leaders of the Twenty-Seven.

Both, he said, agreed “on the need for the EU’s seventh sanctions package against Russia”.

Faced with the maritime blockade imposed on it by Russia and which prevents it from exporting its wheat, Ukraine on Friday asked Turkey to intercept a Russian cargo ship leaving from the port of Berdiansk, in the occupied zone, on the sea of Azov, and whom she suspects of transporting thousands of tons of grain stolen by Moscow.

As if to illustrate the issue of the grain war imposed by Moscow on Kyiv and which worries many African countries depending on Ukrainian wheat for their food security, the Ukrainian army affirmed Friday evening, video in support, that the he Russian army had twice struck Serpents’ Island with phosphorus bombs. The Russian military did not comment on the charges in its daily press briefing on Saturday.

Close to the Ukrainian and Romanian coasts in the Black Sea, Serpents’ Island is essential for controlling maritime traffic.

Moscow had assured Thursday to have withdrawn from it as a “sign of goodwill”. Kyiv, for its part, claims that the Russians were driven out by repeated Ukrainian strikes.