War in Ukraine, Day 104 | Fight for Sievierodonetsk, “blackmail” of Moscow wheat

(Kyiv) Intense fighting continued on Tuesday for control of Sievierodonetsk, a key city in eastern Ukraine whose residential areas Moscow claimed to have “liberated”, while Russia is accused of “blackmail” on the Ukrainian wheat exports.

“The residential areas of Sievierodonetsk have been completely liberated,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a rare televised briefing, adding that “the takeover of its industrial zone and neighboring localities continues”.

“They do not control the city”, once known for its chemical industry and which today “is completely destroyed”, retorted Tuesday evening in a video message on Telegram the governor of the Luhansk region, Sergei Gaïdaï.

“All the forces, all the reserves have been mobilized by the enemy, the Russian army, to cut off the main Lysytchansk-Bakhmut road in order to take Sievierodonetsk. They are shelling Lysychansk very violently,” the governor said.

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assured in his daily video address on Tuesday evening that “the situation on the front has not changed significantly in the past 24 hours”.

Sievierodonetsk is, with its neighboring city Lyssytchansk, the last agglomeration still under Ukrainian control in the Luhansk region. Its capture would open the road to Kramatorsk, a large city in the Donetsk region, to the Russians.

“It is very difficult to hold Sievierodonetsk”, admitted Mr. Gaïdaï, speaking of “mission impossible”.

“We have a vital need for heavy weapons that can counter enemy artillery […] Our guys are mentally strong, and they only ask for one thing: we need Western artillery,” the governor of Luhansk asked. “And at that point, in direct confrontation, there is no doubt that the Russians will lose”.

The Donetsk and Luhansk regions form the Donbass basin, partially under the control of pro-Russian separatists since 2014, which Moscow is now seeking to take full control of.

In Sievierodonetsk, “about 800 civilians” have taken refuge in a chemical plant, said Tuesday the American lawyer of the Ukrainian tycoon Dmytro Firtach, owner of the site. “Among these 800 civilians are about 200 of the factory’s 3,000 employees and about 600 residents of Sievierodonetsk.”

According to a press release, the 200 employees still present in the factory “remain […] to ensure the protection of highly explosive chemicals”.

The situation is reminiscent of that of Mariupol, a large port in the south-east devastated by nearly three months of bombardment, where hundreds of people, Ukrainian fighters and civilians, had taken shelter for weeks in the underground shelters of the immense metallurgical complex Azovstal, besieged by the Russians.

Death of a Russian general

Witness to the intensity of the fighting in the Donbass, the leader of the pro-Russian separatists Denis Pushilin confirmed on Telegram on Tuesday the death of a Russian general, Roman Kutuzov, reported on Sunday by a Russian war correspondent.

Several Russian generals have died since the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Their exact number is unverifiable, the Russian authorities rarely communicating on their losses.

“More than 31,000 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Zelensky said on Tuesday evening. “Since February 24, Russia has been paying for this completely senseless war more than 300 lives of its soldiers every day. But there will be a day when even for Russia the number of casualties will become unacceptable.”

The battle is also continuing in the south, where Kyiv is trying to retake the ground occupied by the Russians in the regions of Kherson and Zaporijjia.

The Ukrainian military claimed to have carried out strikes against Russian encampments near Kherson and ammunition depots near the city of Mykolaiv.

Ukraine also accused the Russian military on Tuesday of imprisoning and torturing nearly 600 people, mostly journalists and pro-Kyiv activists, in the Kherson region.

“According to our information, they are detained in inhuman conditions and are victims of torture […] in specially equipped basements”, accused Tamila Tacheva, representative of the Ukrainian president for Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula bordering Kherson and which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.

In the Zaporijjia region, the Russians notably occupied a large nuclear power plant, which supplied 20% of Ukraine’s electricity before the war.

The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi tweeted on Monday that his organization was preparing an expert mission to the plant, but the Ukrainian operator Energoatom opposed it on Tuesday as long as Kyiv did not wouldn’t have control of it. A visit under Russian control would “legitimize the presence of the occupants”, estimated Energoatom on Telegram.

Several Russian officials have indicated in recent weeks that they want to occupy these regions of southern Ukraine permanently. A close Kremlin spoke of a referendum on annexation to Russia which could take place as early as July.

wheat blackmail

An economic battle is also being played out, that of the wheat resources of the cereal superpower that is Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Turkey on Tuesday evening to discuss the establishment of secure maritime corridors for the export of grain in the Black Sea. Moscow rejects all responsibility for this crisis, which it believes is due solely to Western sanctions.

Mr. Lavrov is due to meet his Turkish counterpart, Mevlüt Cavusoglu, on Wednesday, with whom he will discuss the possibility of Ukraine exporting its crops blocked in its ports. This blockage is causing prices to soar and posing a serious risk of famine in certain African and Middle Eastern countries.

At the request of the United Nations, Turkey has offered to help escort maritime convoys from Ukrainian ports, despite the presence of mines, some of which have been detected near the Turkish coast.

The Ukrainian press assured that the discussions scheduled for Wednesday in Ankara will involve, in addition to Turkey and Russia, “the United Nations and Ukraine”. But the Ukrainian Embassy in Ankara denied any contact between Ambassador Vasyl Bodnar and Mr. Lavrov.

The head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken accused Moscow of “blackmail” at the lifting of international sanctions by blocking wheat exports from Ukraine, and considered “credible” information from Kyiv according to which Russia ” steals” tons of Ukrainian cereals, “to sell them for his own profit”.

According to the American daily New York Times, Washington had warned 14 countries, mainly in Africa, in mid-May that Russian cargo ships were carrying “stolen Ukrainian grain”.

On Tuesday evening, the Russian Ministry of Defense accused Ukrainian “nationalist battalion fighters” of having “purposely set fire to a large grain depot” in the port of Mariupol. “More than 50,000 tonnes of cereals have been destroyed in this way”, assured General Mikhail Mizintsev, accusing Kyiv of “food terrorism against its own people”.

“Russia says that the food shortage is incumbent on Ukraine… This is false,” President Zelensky insisted on Monday. The amount of grain destined for export and blocked in Ukraine by the Russians could triple by “by the fall” to reach 75 million tonnes, he said.

“We need maritime corridors and we are discussing this with Turkey and the United Kingdom” as well as with the UN, continued the Ukrainian president.

In Kyiv, Ukrainians flock to observe helmets, food rations and missiles recovered following the withdrawal of the Russian army from occupied areas and displayed in an exhibition called “Ukraine-Crucifixion”.

“Here you can see and touch the war with your finger,” Commissioner Yuri Savtchouk told AFP. “That’s also the goal: to shock people so that they realize what’s going on.”

Additional aid of $1.49 billion

The World Bank’s Board of Directors on Tuesday approved additional financing of $1.49 billion for Ukraine to help the government pay the salaries of civil servants and social workers.

This new funding brings World Bank funding to more than $4 billion.

On March 8, the institution had approved an aid of three billion with an immediate disbursement of 489 million.

Nearly $2 billion has now been disbursed, the World Bank said in a statement.

She says the new project has received funding guarantees from the UK, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Latvia.

“The World Bank’s portfolio of projects in Ukraine supports the improvement of public services that directly benefit ordinary citizens, in areas such as water supply, sanitation, heating, electricity, energy efficiency energy, roads, social protection, education and health care,” the institution said in a statement.

“The maintenance of these basic services and the government’s ability to provide them are essential to prevent a further deterioration of living conditions and poverty in Ukraine beyond the suffering inflicted on the population due to the war”, said said the World Bank’s director for Eastern Europe, Arup Banerji.

He also notes that maintaining the government’s functioning capacities will be “the foundation of any recovery and reconstruction”.