War in Ukraine, Day 101 | The Battle of Sievierodonetsk rages on

(Kyiv) Russia has thrown itself headlong into the battle for Sievierodonetsk, a key city in eastern Ukraine plagued by “street fighting” this weekend, while still seeking, according to Kyiv, to have control over the whole of Ukrainian territory.

For the moment in any case, more than 100 days after the start of the conflict, the Russian troops were concentrating their offensive on the large mining basin of Donbass, an eastern region partially in the hands of pro-Russian separatists since 2014 and which they hope to conquer entirely. .

A “war of attrition”, ruled NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, while Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiï Reznikov, while acknowledging that “it is still impossible to predict” when it will end, unexpectedly in this context dropped on Saturday: “according to my optimistic forecasts, it is realistic this year”.

And this although “Russia continues to make efforts to occupy our entire state”, he added before an international forum on security, the Kremlin dreaming according to him of “gathering the lands” which he considers “ its own”, including “Poland, the Baltic States, Slovakia and others”.

Confusing situation in Sievierodonetsk

On the ground, the situation remained very confused in Sievierodonetsk.

Russia said on Saturday that Ukrainian military units were withdrawing from it, while the staff of the Ukrainian army and the mayor of this city, Olexandre Striouk, reported clashes in the evening with a view to completely retaking it.

Russian troops “succeeded in entering the city and seizing a good part of it, dividing it in two. But our soldiers managed to redeploy, to build a line of defence. Currently, we are doing everything necessary to restore full control” of Sievierodonetsk, said Mr. Striouk, referring to “street fights”.

“Units of the Ukrainian army, having suffered critical losses during the fighting for Sievierodonetsk (up to 90% in several units), are falling back to Lyssychansk”, a neighboring locality, for its part proclaimed the Russian Ministry of defense.

Earlier in the day, the governor of the Luhansk region, Sergiï Gaïdaï, had admitted that “the situation in the whole region” was “extremely difficult”: “The fighting is currently concentrated in Sievierodonetsk, because […] the Russian army threw all its weight and reserves” into this battle. “Initial information indicates that they (the Russians) have managed to take control of most of the city. But our forces are pushing them back now.”

Sievierodonetsk, which before the war had some 100,000 inhabitants, and Lyssytchansk, located some 80 km from the Ukrainian regional administrative capital of Kramatorsk, are key agglomerations for achieving this.

Attacks in the south

Parallel attacks occurred on Saturday on other fronts.

In the southern region of Kherson, “residents have left the village of Trudolyubivka” and Russian forces “continue to shell occupied territories and Ukrainian army positions”, announced the Ukrainian presidency, warning of a crisis humanitarian aid in Russian-held areas.

In addition, “warehouses were damaged” and there were two “casualties”, according to Kyiv, when a Russian cruise missile hit an agricultural enterprise in the major port of Odessa, also in the south.

The Russian army, for its part, claimed to have destroyed “a deployment point for foreign mercenaries” near Dachnoe, in the Odessa region, and two Ukrainian command centers and six ammunition depots in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. .

She also said that she hit with missiles a training center for Ukrainian gunners near Stetskovka, in the Sumy region (north), where “foreign instructors trained Ukrainian soldiers in the use of the M777 howitzer”.

” Need help ”

Four foreign volunteer soldiers, including a Frenchman, were killed fighting Russian troops in Ukraine, the International Defense Legion of Ukraine, the official body for foreign volunteer fighters, also announced on Saturday.

The Legion cited the names of a Dutchman, an Australian, a German and a Frenchman without specifying the date or the circumstances of their death.

Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russians have tripled the portion of Ukrainian territory they control: with the Crimean peninsula and the occupied regions of Donbass and southern Ukraine, Russia now has the control over nearly 125,000 km²or 20% of the area of ​​this country, according to President Zelensky.

The situation also remained very fragile in the takeovers by the Ukrainian forces, such as in Horenka, on the outskirts of Kyiv (north-west), where a distribution of humanitarian aid took place on Friday.

Hanna Viniychuk, 67, cries as she says she lost everything: ‘When the apartment was bombed, I could hardly take anything and now it’s too expensive to take the bus, so I came to pick up the premises of the town hall of basic necessities”.

Tetyana Shepeleva, a leader of the community of Horenka, distributes the humanitarian aid: “We have a list of people who need help managed by the army, around 5000 people currently”.

She points to the UNICEF boxes stacked up to the ceiling: “There are sheets, mattresses, meals prepared by the World Center Kitchen network. People have nothing and always try to have a little more”.

“Solidarity” with Sweden and Finland

Replying to French President Emmanuel Macron who had repeated the day before that “Russia should not be humiliated” “so that the day the fighting stops, we can build a way out through diplomatic channels”, the head of diplomacy Ukrainian Dmytro Kouleba judged on Saturday that this position could only “humiliate France”.

“We all better focus on how to put Russia in its place. It will bring peace and save lives,” he retorted to Mr. Macron, one of the few international leaders who is trying to maintain a dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At the same time, US Forces Chief of Staff General Mark Milley displayed US determination to support Sweden and Finland ahead of their NATO membership aboard the USS Kearsarge, the largest US warship ever to dock in Stockholm harbour.

“It is important for us, the United States, as well as other NATO countries, to show our solidarity with Finland and Sweden with this exercise,” noted the officer, speaking of the annual naval maneuvers of Alliance in the Baltic Sea “Baltops 22”.