KREMENCHUK, Ukraine (AP) – Russian forces struggled to encircle the last stronghold of Ukraine’s military in a long-contested eastern province on Wednesday, as shock echoed from a Russian airstrike on a shopping mall that killed at least 18 people for two days were killed earlier in the center of the country.
In Moscow’s struggle to wrest the entire Donbass region from Ukraine, Russian forces advanced on two villages south of Lysychansk while Ukrainian troops fought to prevent their encirclement.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said Russian forces were making “gradual progress” in their offensive to capture Lysychansk, the last town in Luhansk province under Ukrainian control, after Ukrainian forces withdrew from the neighboring town of Sievierodonetsk.
Russian forces and their separatist allies control 95% of Luhansk and about half of Donetsk, the two provinces that make up the predominantly Russian-speaking Donbass.
The latest assessment by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, says Ukrainians are likely in a combative retreat to seek more defensible positions while draining manpower and resources from Russian forces.
Avril Haines, the US director of national intelligence, said Russia “may think time is on its side” due to escalating costs borne by the West and fatigue as the war lengthens. The most likely scenario predicted by American intelligence, according to Haines, is a “grueling battle” in which Russia will consolidate its grip on southern Ukraine by the fall.
The US correctly predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine in February, but wrongly predicted that it would quickly seize Kyiv. At an event in Washington on Wednesday, Haines said Russian President Vladimir Putin has “basically the same political goals as before, which is to say he wants to take most of Ukraine” and push it away from NATO.
“We see a mismatch between Putin’s near-term military goals in this area and the capabilities of his military, a kind of mismatch between his ambitions and what the military can achieve,” Haines said.
Meanwhile, crews continued to search the rubble of the Kremenchuk shopping mall, where 20 people are still missing, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Svitlana Rybalko, press secretary for Ukraine’s State Emergency Medical Service, told The Associated Press that investigators found fragments of eight other bodies in addition to the 18 people killed. It wasn’t immediately clear if that meant there were more casualties. Several survivors suffered severed limbs.
“Police cannot say for sure how many (victims) there are. So we don’t find the corpses, but the fragments of corpses,” Rybalko said. “Now we’re clearing right at the epicenter of the explosion. Here we can find practically no bodies as such.”
Several families stood by the remains of the Amstor shopping mall Wednesday morning hoping to find missing loved ones.
“This is pure genocide,” said local resident Tatiana Chernyshova as she laid flowers at the site. “Something like this must not happen in the 21st century.”
“We have to involve everyone, to end the war, to help us fight these scum – these Russian aggressors,” Chernyshova said.
Psychologists who work with families locally said they are trying to help people cope with their loss.
“We’re trying to help them let go of their emotions now because later it will be more difficult and much more painful,” said a psychologist, who did not give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
After the attack on the mall, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of becoming a “terrorist” state. On Wednesday he accused NATO of not embracing or equipping his embattled country more comprehensively.
“NATO’s open-door policy shouldn’t be like old turnstiles on Kiev’s subway that stay open but stay closed when you approach them until you pay,” Zelenskyy said via video link to NATO leaders who were meeting met in Madrid. “Didn’t Ukraine pay enough? Was our contribution to the defense of Europe and all of civilization not sufficient?”
He called for more modern artillery systems and other weapons, and warned NATO leaders they must either provide Ukraine with the aid it needs to defeat Russia or “face a delayed war between Russia and you.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Wednesday dismissed what she described as a “blatant provocation” by the Ukrainian government when it tried to blame Russia’s military for the missile attack on the mall.
The UK Ministry of Defense said there was a “realistic possibility” that the mall strike “should hit a nearby infrastructure target”.
“Russian planners most likely remain willing to accept a high level of collateral damage if they see a military necessity in hitting a target,” the ministry said. “It is almost certain that Russia will continue to conduct strikes to cut off supplies to front-line Ukrainian troops.”
The Russian military is also suffering from a shortage of more modern precision strike weapons, increasing the number of civilian casualties, the British ministry said.
In southern Ukraine, at least four people were killed and five wounded in a Russian missile attack on a multi-story apartment building in the city of Mykolaiv on Wednesday, Regional Governor Vitaliy Kim said. Mykolaiv is a major port, and its capture — as well as Odessa further west — would be key to Russia’s goal of cutting off Ukraine from its Black Sea coast.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that the missile attack on Mykolayiv was aimed at a base training “foreign mercenaries” and ammunition depots.
In other developments Wednesday:
– A senior Russian lawmaker warned that Lithuania’s refusal to let some goods subject to European Union sanctions through to Russia’s Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad could trigger a military confrontation.
The statement by Vladimir Jabarov, deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, followed the Kremlin’s warning that he would retaliate against restrictions on transit to Kaliningrad. The region borders EU and NATO members Poland and Lithuania.
– Russia’s foreign ministry has subpoenaed the Norwegian chargé d’affaires to protest Oslo’s blocking of a shipment of supplies to a Russian coal-mining town on Svalbard.
Although Svalbard is Norwegian territory, a 1920 treaty grants all signatory states the right to exploit its natural resources. Russia operates a coal mine in Barentsburg, a settlement of about 450 people that relies on supplies of food, machinery and other supplies from the mainland. Norway imposed sanctions on supplies from Russia in April.
— Ukrainian military intelligence says 144 Ukrainian troops were released from Russian captivity in the largest prisoner exchange since the war began. Of those released, 95 helped defend the Azovstal Steelworks in the devastated city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine before it was captured by Russian forces weeks ago. Denis Pushilin, the leader of the Donetsk separatists, said that the same number of soldiers were released on both sides.
– European Union leaders approved a 600 million euro ($631 million) package to address food security problems caused by the Ukraine war in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.
— Britain imposes sanctions on Russia’s second richest man and a cousin of Putin. Vladimir Potanin, owner of the Interross conglomerate, has continued to accumulate wealth while supporting Putin, acquiring Rosbank and shares in Tinkoff Bankonith in the post-Ukrainian era, the British government said in a statement on Wednesday.
The statement said Putin’s cousin Anna Tsivileva and her husband Sergey Tsivilev “benefited significantly” from their relationship with Putin. Tsivileva is the president of the coal mining company JSC Kolmar Group, and Tsivilev is the governor of the coal-rich Kemerovo region.
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Karmanau reported from Lemberg, Ukraine. Frank Griffiths and Sylvia Hui in London, Maria Grazia Murru in Kyiv, Samuel Petrequin in Brussels and Nomaan Merchant in Washington contributed.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.