KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (AP) – Moscow-backed separatists on Friday bombed eastern Ukraine’s industrial Donbass region, claiming to have seized a railroad junction, amid mounting concerns that besieged towns in the region would suffer the same horrors people in the port city of Mariupol in Ukraine would witness weeks before it fell.
Ukrainian officials warned that without more sophisticated weapons from the West, their forces would be unable to stop the Russian offensive.
Friday’s fight was centered on two key cities: Sievierodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk. They are the last areas under Ukrainian control in Luhansk, one of two provinces that make up Donbass where Russian-backed separatists have controlled an area for eight years. According to the authorities, 1,500 people have already died in Sievjerodonetsk since the war began almost three months ago. Russian-backed rebels also said they had taken the Lyman railroad hub.
The Luhansk governor warned that Ukrainian soldiers may have to withdraw from Sieverodonetsk to avoid encirclement. But he predicted an ultimate Ukrainian victory. “The Russians will not be able to capture the Luhansk region in the coming days, as analysts predict,” Serhiy Haidai wrote on Telegram on Friday. “We will have enough forces and means to defend ourselves.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnskyj also struck a defiant note. In his nightly video address on Friday, he said: “If the occupiers think they will own Lyman or Sievierodonetsk, they are wrong. Donbass will be Ukrainian.”
Sievierodonetsk Mayor Oleksandr Striuk told The Associated Press that “the city is being systematically destroyed – 90% of the buildings in the city are damaged.”
Striuk described conditions in Sievierodonetsk reminiscent of the Battle of Mariupol, located in Donbass’ other province, Donetsk. The port city, now in ruins, came under constant bombardment from Russian forces in a nearly three-month siege that ended last week when Russia demanded its capture. More than 20,000 of its civilians are feared dead.
About 100,000 people lived in Seyerodonetsk before the war. About 12,000 to 13,000 remain in the city, Striuk said, huddled in temporary shelters and largely cut off from the rest of Ukraine. At least 1,500 people have died there because of the war, which is now in its 93rd day. The number includes people killed by shelling or in fires caused by Russian missile attacks, as well as those who died from shrapnel wounds, untreated illnesses, lack of medicines or being trapped under rubble, the mayor said.
In the north-eastern quarter of the city, Russian reconnaissance and sabotage groups tried to capture the Mir Hotel and the surrounding area, Striuk said.
Evidence of Russia’s strategy for the Donbass can be found in Mariupol, where Moscow is tightening its control through measures such as state-controlled broadcast programs and revised curricula, according to an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank.
General Phillip Breedlove, former head of the US European Command for NATO, said on Friday during a panel at the Washington-based Middle East Institute that Russia “appears to have adjusted its targets again and it seems scary that they are now trying to that they have to consolidate and enforce rather than focus on expanding it.”
Ukrainian analysts said Russian forces have taken advantage of delays in western arms shipments to step up their offensive there.
However, this aggressive push could backfire by seriously depleting Russia’s arsenal. Echoing an assessment by the UK MoD, military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said Russia was fielding 50-year-old T-62 tanks “which means the world’s second army is running out of modernized equipment.”
Russian-backed rebels said Friday they had taken Lyman, Donetsk’s major rail hub north of two other key cities still under Ukrainian control. Ukraine’s presidential aide Oleksiy Arestovych acknowledged the loss Thursday night, although a spokesman for Ukraine’s defense ministry reported on Friday that his soldiers had opposed Russian attempts to drive them out completely.
As Ukraine’s hopes of halting Russian advances faded, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba pleaded with Western nations for heavy weapons, saying it was the only area where Russia had a clear advantage.
“Without artillery, without multiple missile systems, we won’t be able to push them back,” he said.
The US Department of Defense would not confirm a CNN report that the Biden administration was preparing to send long-range missile systems to Ukraine, perhaps as soon as next week. “Certainly we are aware and aware of Ukrainian requests, private and public, for a so-called multi-launch missile system. And I will not prejudge decisions that have not yet been made,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.
Just south of Sievierodonetsk, volunteers hoped to evacuate 100 people from a smaller town. It was an arduous process: many of the evacuees from Bakhmut were old or infirm and had to be carried out of apartment buildings on soft stretchers and wheelchairs.
Minibuses and vans sped through the city, loading dozens in for the first leg of a long journey west.
“Bakhmut is currently a high-risk area,” said Mark Poppert, an American volunteer working for British charity RefugEase. “We’re trying to get as many people out as possible.”
Neighboring Belarus to the north, which was used as a base by Russia before the invasion, announced on Friday it would be sending troops towards the Ukrainian border.
Some European leaders sought dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin over easing the global food crisis, exacerbated by Ukraine’s inability to ship millions of tons of grain and other agricultural products.
Moscow has tried to shift the blame for the food crisis onto the West and is urging its leaders to lift existing sanctions.
Putin on Friday told Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer that Ukraine should remove mines in the Black Sea to allow safe shipping, according to a Kremlin transcript of their call; Russia and Ukraine have traded the blame for the mines near Ukrainian ports.
Nehammer’s office said the two leaders had also discussed a prisoner swap, and that Putin indicated efforts to arrange one would be “intensified.”
___
Karmanau reported from Lemberg, Ukraine. Andrea Rosa in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Andrew Katell in New York and AP journalists around the world contributed.
___
This story has been edited to correct that 1,500 people died in Sievierodonetsk alone, not in the entire Donbass region.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine