Article author:
Reuters
Simon Lewis and Max Hander
Slovyansk — Russian troops attack targets in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine the day after President Vladimir Putin declared victory in neighboring Luhansk Oblast on Tuesday. did. Months of a tough friction war where both sides lost many men.
Donetsk and Luhansk together form the industrialized eastern part of Ukraine, Donbus, which has experienced the greatest battles in Europe for generations. Russia has stated in its two self-proclaimed People's Republics that it wants to take control of Ukraine as a whole on behalf of the Moscow-backed separatists.
After Russian troops ruled Lysychans'k, the last fort of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said that Moscow made its efforts especially in the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. In Donetsk, who said he was hoping to concentrate.
On Tuesday, Russian troops struck markets and residential areas in Slovyansk, killing at least two people and injuring seven, local officials said.
On-site Reuters reported that when firefighters tried to extinguish the flames, they saw yellow smoke swirling from an auto supply store, and the flames caught a line of stalls in the market.
"Russians are again deliberately targeting areas where civilians gather," Donetsk Governor Pablo Kirirenko wrote in a Facebook post. "This is total terrorism."
Earlier, Kirirenko said that both Slovyansk and nearby Kramatorsk were heavily bombarded overnight. "They are now also the main line of attack on the enemy," he said. "There is no safe place in the Donetsk area without artillery."
After a long war.
The Russian Defense Ministry, which said it would not target residential areas, used precision weapons to destroy Donetsk's command centers and artillery, where Ukraine still controls many major cities. Said.
In a comment showing the escalation of Moscow's war terrorism, the chairman of the Russian House of Representatives, Duma, said that Ukraine was doing everything to keep Russia from stopping its invasion. At the border of the Duma region as advertised that it has become a "state sponsor of terrorism".
Vyacheslav Volodin's remarks reiterated after Moscow abandoned its attacks on the capital Kyiv and the second largest city, Kharkiv, in the face of fierce resistance from Ukraine. In a war that suggested that it may be preparing to expand its stated war objectives.
As a further sign that Russia is preparing for a long war, Duma passed two bills in his first reading.
Putin "rests military preparations" while troops from other parts of Ukraine continue to fight the troops involved in the occupation of Luhansk, which is also part of an attempt to occupy the city of Donetsk. I will recover. "
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday that he believed that Ukrainian troops could recapture the territory recently occupied by Russian troops.
Johnson has updated Zelenskiy with the latest delivery of British military equipment, including 10 self-propelled artillery systems and wandering ammunition. These will arrive in the next few days to weeks.
Zelenskiy's adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said that Russia's occupation of Lysychans'k and Sievierodonetsk is a medium-sized city in Luhansk, now largely abandoned, human and economic to Moscow. He said it cost a lot and took 90 days.
"This is Russia's last victory on Ukrainian territory," Aresovich said in a video posted online.
"Huge costs"
Some military experts believe that Russia's fierce victory in Luhansk brought little strategic benefit to its troops, and the outcome of the war was I kept the balance.
"I think it's a tactical victory for Russia, but it costs a lot," said Neil Melvin, a RUSI think tank in London.
Melvin says that Ukraine's decisive battle will take place not in the east, where Russia has launched its main attack, but in the south, where Kieu has launched a counterattack to recapture the territory around the city. He said it was likely. Kherson.
Ukrainian air defense intercepted and destroyed three missiles launched by the Russian Air Force at Ochakiv and Chernomorsk ports in the western Black Sea of Ukraine on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Odessa local government said. , Serhiy Bratuk said.
According to Mayor Oleksandr Senkevic, a Russian rocket previously attacked the city of Mykolaiv in the southern part of the main road between Kherson and Odesa.
Reuters was unable to validate the report on its own.
The Russian invasion has killed thousands, evacuated millions and flattened cities, especially in the Russian-speaking eastern and southeastern parts of Ukraine. Also, because Ukraine and Russia are both major grain producers, they are pushing up global energy and food prices and increasing the risk of famine in poor countries.
Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Jeparwa addressed the United Nations Council for Human Rights in Geneva, stating: The number of people in Africa and Asia may be hungry.
Kieu and the West have accused Moscow of war crimes, saying Russia is making unprovoked imperial-style land acquisitions in its fellow former Soviet Republic. Moscow denies it, calling its action a "special military operation", corrupting the Ukrainian army, eradicating powerful and dangerous nationalists, and protecting the Russian language from Ukrainian authorities.
(Report by Reuters, written by Michael Perry, Andrew Osborne, Gareth Jones, edited by Robert Barsel, Tomasz Janovsky, Mark Heinrick)