The Ukrainian army announced on Sunday July 3 that its soldiers had withdrawn from Lyssytchansk, a key city in eastern Ukraine facing a violent assault by Russian troops for weeks. A few dozen kilometers away, in Sloviansk, multiple rocket launchers fired “six dead and fifteen injured”, announced the mayor of the city. Franceinfo looks back on the highlights of the day on the war front in Ukraine.
Ukrainian army announces withdrawal from Lysychansk
“In order to preserve the lives of the Ukrainian defenders, the decision has been taken to withdraw” of Lysychansk, the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff said in a statement on Sunday.“In the conditions of multiple superiority of Russian troops in artillery, air force, missile launch systems, ammunition and personnel, continuing the defense of the city would have had fatal consequences”adds this press release.
Lysychansk was the last major city not to fall to Moscow in the Luhansk region, one of the two Donbass provinces. This coal basin, an economic and cultural center bordering Russia, has been plagued by fighting since the start of the war on February 24.
After weeks of devastating fighting, the capture of Lysytchansk allows Moscow to progress in its plan to conquer all of Donbass, an industrial region in eastern Ukraine partly controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014, and to advance towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, two major cities further west hit by rocket fire on Sunday.
Six dead after shooting in Sloviansk, in the east of the country
The multiple rocket launchers that hit Sloviansk on Sunday made “six dead and fifteen injured”announced the mayor of this city in eastern Ukraine under pressure from the Russian army. “Among the dead there is a child”, he said on Facebook, confirming an assessment given earlier by a regional spokesperson to the Ukrainian media Suspilne. He specified that several districts of this city of approximately 100,000 inhabitants before the war had been affected.
Further south, the city of Kramatorsk, administrative center of Donbass under Ukrainian control, was hit for the second consecutive day by Smertch rockets, according to the mayor of the city. These strikes, which hit a residential area and an unoccupied hotel, caused no casualties, he said.
Moscow accuses kyiv of firing missiles at Belgorod, near Ukraine
The Russian military said it shot down at dawn on Sunday three Ukrainian missiles launched against the town of Belgorod, near Ukraine, where a local official had previously announced the death of at least four people after explosions.
According to Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, the Russian military also shot down two Ukrainian TU-143 drones “charged with explosives” and heading towards the city of Kursk, also close to the Ukrainian border.
In a video released midday on Sunday, the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, claimed that these explosions in Belgorod had left at least four people dead and four injured.
Since the start of the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine on February 24, Russia has repeatedly accused Ukrainian forces of carrying out strikes on Russian soil, particularly in the Belgorod region.