Moscow said Tuesday it had carried out a dozen strikes in eastern Ukraine, the day after kyiv announced a new Russian army offensive in the region, nearly two months after the start of the war. Russian invasion.
Using “high-precision missiles”, the Russian air force “neutralized 13 strongholds” of the Ukrainian army, said the Russian Ministry of Defense, calling for the surrender of “all Ukrainian soldiers” .
The local authorities have for their part called on the inhabitants to flee this “hell”, despite the absence of humanitarian corridors.
In recent weeks, after failing to take control of the Kyiv region, the Russian military campaign has refocused on the Donbass basin, partially controlled by pro-Russian separatist forces since 2014.
“Now we can say that Russian troops have started the battle for Donbass, for which they have been preparing for a long time. A very large part of the entire Russian army is now devoted to this offensive,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday evening in a speech broadcast on Telegram.
“No matter how many Russian soldiers are brought here, we will fight. We will defend ourselves,” he said.
For his chief of staff, Andriï Yermak, “the second phase of the war has begun”.
The Russian general staff said on Tuesday that it had struck “60 military installations of Ukraine”, including three command points, and two Tochka-U missile warehouses.
According to a senior US Defense Department official, Russia has increased its military presence in eastern and southern Ukraine by “eleven battalions” in one week, bringing the total of battalions in the country to 76.
“Hell”
AFP saw buses carrying Ukrainian soldiers head for Kramatorsk, the capital of Donbass, while local authorities called on the civilian population to evacuate.
“It’s hell”, moved on Monday evening on Facebook the Ukrainian governor of the Lugansk region, Serguiï Gaïdaï. The fighting “is incessant” in several cities.
“Leave! “, he ordered his fellow citizens on Tuesday. “Thousands of Kreminna residents did not have time to leave and now they are hostages of the Russians. »
Kreminna, which had around 18,000 inhabitants before the war and is located about 50 kilometers northeast of Kramatorsk, fell to the Russians, he said, although Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych claimed that “intense street fighting” is still taking place there.
In the neighboring region of Donetsk, the Russians are bombing “in the direction of Mariinka, Ocheretyn and Avdiïvka”, its governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, reported on Telegram on Tuesday. “The situation on the front is difficult but controlled,” he assured.
The Moscow offensive killed at least eight civilians on Monday and another on Tuesday in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions, according to local authorities.
Four of them — a family — were killed by Russian fire as they tried to flee Kreminna, according to Mr. Gaïdaï.
But, in the absence of an agreement with the Russians, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, no evacuation corridor for civilians could be organized across the country on Tuesday, for the third consecutive day. Neither in these eastern regions, nor in Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, besieged since the beginning of March by Russian troops.
New ultimatum
In this southeastern city, where the Ukrainian authorities fear the death of 20 to 22,000 civilians, the fighting is concentrated around the Azovstal metallurgical complex.
Ukrainian fighters are entrenched there, but also “at least 1,000 civilians, most of them women, children and the elderly, in the underground shelters” of the factory, the Mariupol municipal council said on Telegram on Tuesday.
Russia, which on Tuesday called on Mariupol’s defenders to end “their senseless resistance” after an initial ultimatum on Sunday, is determined to seize Mariupol.
Taking it would allow Russian forces to consolidate their coastal territorial gains along the Sea of Azov by linking Donbass with Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, and free up troops for other operations.
Fighting on all fronts
Still in the east, Tor anti-aircraft missile divisions were transferred to the Kharkiv region and S-400 and S-300 anti-aircraft systems were deployed in Russia’s Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian General Staff.
In Kharkiv itself, Ukraine’s second city, three civilians were killed Monday in new bombardments.
Russia also reported dozens of other missile strikes in southern Ukraine, another frontline. For its part, the Ukrainian army warned on Monday evening of a high threat of bombing in the Mykolaiv region (south).
“Everyone was expecting an offensive like February 24 with a terrible big force,” Arestovych told Ukrainian television on Tuesday. “However, it is proceeding cautiously. These are Russian units trying to advance. In the south, they are trying to encircle us, it started the day before yesterday. In the same way, by units in the direction of Gulyaipole”.
The city of Lviv is also targeted. “Powerful” Russian strikes killed seven people there on Monday, according to local authorities.
Not far from there, a large depot of “foreign armaments”, coming from the United States and the European Union, was destroyed, according to Moscow.
Located far from the front, near the Polish border, Lviv has become a city of refuge for displaced people and had hitherto been little targeted by Russian strikes.
For Monday alone, the Russian army claims to have disabled 16 Ukrainian military sites, in particular housing ammunition and Tochka-U tactical missiles. These armaments constitute a major stake, both for Moscow and for kyiv.
Support for Ukraine, the United States announced on Monday that the first shipments of their new tranche of military aid (amounting to 800 million dollars, 741 million euros) had just arrived the day before at the borders of this country to be handed over to the Ukrainian army.
Accused of abuses by kyiv, singled out by Moscow
In this context, Vladimir Putin on Monday awarded an honorary title, in particular for his “heroism”, to the 64th motorized rifle brigade, accused by Ukraine of having committed a massacre of civilians in Boutcha, on the outskirts of kyiv – -which Moscow denies.
On the diplomatic front, President Zelensky said on Monday that he hoped to obtain for his country “in the coming weeks” the status of candidate for EU membership. He spoke on Monday with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda and Croatian Prime Ministers Andrej Plenkovic and Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov.
US President Joe Biden will take part in a virtual meeting on Tuesday devoted to the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
He was to discuss, “with the allies and partners” of the United States, the list of which was not disclosed, the “continued support for Ukraine and efforts to ensure that Russia is held to account”, according to a White House official.