Ukrainian forces admitted on Monday that they had abandoned the center of Severodonetsk, following a new Russian offensive on this key city in eastern Ukraine, which the two belligerents have been fighting over for weeks.
“With artillery support, the enemy stormed Severodonetsk, achieved partial success, and pushed our units back from the city center. Hostilities are continuing,” the Ukrainian general staff said Monday morning.
Sergei Gaïdaï, governor of the Lugansk region – of which Severodonetsk is the administrative center for the part controlled by the Ukrainian authorities – confirmed that the Ukrainian forces had been pushed back from the center.
“Street fighting continues […] the Russians continue to destroy the city,” he wrote on Facebook, posting photos of devastated buildings in flames.
According to the pro-Russian separatists fighting with the Russians in this region, the last Ukrainian divisions in Severodonetsk are now “blocked”, after the destruction of the last bridge which allowed to reach the neighboring city of Lyssytchansk.
“They have two possibilities […]surrender or die,” said Edouard Bassourine, spokesman for the separatists.
Mr. Gaïdaï estimated that 70 to 80% of the city was controlled by Russian forces. But “it’s a lie to say that they surround the whole city”, he told Radio Free Europe.
“terrifying human cost”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in his daily address Monday evening, called the “human cost” of the battle of Severodonestk “terrifying”.
“The Battle of Donbass will surely go down in military history as one of the most violent battles in Europe”, supported the Ukrainian president.
The capture of this city would give Moscow control of the Lugansk region and open the way to another large city, Kramatorsk, capital of the neighboring region of Donetsk. An essential step to conquer the entire Donbass basin, a mainly Russian-speaking region partly held by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.
According to Governor Gaïdaï, Russian bombardments notably targeted the Azot chemical plant, where, according to him, nearly 500 civilians, including 40 children, found refuge, and hit sewage treatment plants in the city.
“We are trying to negotiate a humanitarian corridor” for civilians, “so far without success”, he said on his Telegram account.
In Lysytchansk, three civilians, including a six-year-old boy, died in shelling over the past 24 hours, he said.
And in Donetsk, pro-Russian separatist authorities said four people were killed and 22 injured in “massive” shelling by Kyiv forces.
New mass grave near Boutcha
In northern Ukraine, three Russian missiles hit the town of Prylouky, and four villages were ordered to evacuate for fear of fires sparked by shelling, Ukrainian authorities said on Monday.
“The information about the destruction is being clarified,” Cherniguiv region governor Vyacheslav Chaous added on Telegram. No details were provided on the targeted infrastructure at Prylouky, which houses a military airfield.
kyiv police announced the discovery of seven bodies on Monday in a new mass grave, near Boutcha, a locality near the capital where the corpses of civilians had been found after the withdrawal of the Russian army at the end of March.
“Seven civilians were tortured by the Russians and then cowardly executed with a bullet in the head,” kyiv police chief Andriï Nebytov said on Facebook, adding that “several victims had their hands tied and their knees tied.” .
In Mikolaiv, a major port on the Dnieper estuary in the south, the Russian advance was stopped on the outskirts of the city and the Ukrainian army dug trenches there, noted a team from Agence France-Presse .
“The Russians are bluffing. There are many of them, they have a lot of weapons, old and new, but they are not soldiers, ”said Serguiï, 54, a Ukrainian brigade captain, on Sunday, while his comrades in arms fired towards the enemy positions.
War crimes
In a report published on Monday, Amnesty International accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying hundreds of civilians had died in relentless attacks on Kharkiv (northeast), carried out in particular with cluster bombs.
After an in-depth investigation, the NGO says it has found evidence of the use by Russian forces, in seven attacks on neighborhoods of Ukraine’s second city, of 9N210 and 9N235 cluster bombs and mines dispersion, two categories prohibited by international treaties.
The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday raised the case of a Ukrainian teacher, Viktoria Androucha, 25, whom the Russian forces, who accuse her of informing the Ukrainian army, made disappear after her arrest at the end of march.
Mme Androucha is, like other Ukrainian citizens, now imprisoned in Russia and her lawyer does not have access to her, HRW lamented in a press release, recalling that enforced disappearances are crimes against humanity.
From February 24 to May 10, the UN documented in Ukraine “204 apparent cases of enforced disappearances involving 169 men, 34 women and a boy, the vast majority attributed to Russian” and pro-Russian forces, according to HRW.
Ukrainian justice has opened more than 12,000 war crimes investigations in the country since the start of the Russian invasion, according to the prosecution.
As negotiations between the belligerents are at an impasse, Mikhail Kasyanov, the former first head of government (appointed in 2000 and sacked in 2004) of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has warned that the head of the Kremlin has other countries in his sights.
“If Ukraine falls, then the Baltic countries will be next” on the list, assured the one who is now an opponent of Putin to Agence France-Presse.
25% less arable land
On the diplomatic level, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen admitted on Sunday that the Twenty-Seven remained divided on the question of granting Ukraine the status of candidate for membership of the European Union.
” The challenge [sera] to come out of the European Council (scheduled for June 23 and 24) with a united position that reflects the importance of these historic decisions,” she said, as the Commission must deliver a first opinion on this issue by the end of the week.
For their part, the Member States of the World Trade Organization (WTO) met on Sunday in Geneva in the hope of helping to find a solution to the risk of a serious food crisis that the invasion of Ukraine, whose fertile land traditionally feeds hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Ukraine has lost a quarter of its arable land due to the Russian occupation of certain regions in the south and east, its agriculture ministry announced on Monday. But “the structure of the crops sown this year is more than sufficient to ensure consumption” of the Ukrainian population, said the Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Taras Vysotskiï, during a press conference.