Posted BY: Teresa |NwoReport
Ukraine’s strategic city of Severodonetsk is now ‘fully occupied by the Russian army, its mayor said on Saturday.
After weeks of fighting over the key eastern city, mayor Oleksandr Striuk said: ‘The city has been fully occupied by the Russians.’
Later on Saturday, the Russian defense ministry’s spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, announced the ‘total liberation’ of Severodonetsk as well as the nearby villages of Borivske, Voronov, and Syrotyne.
‘All territory on the left bank of the Donets river within the limits of the Lugansk region is under control of Russian and pro-Russian forces, he said.
The Ukrainian army on Friday said it would withdraw its forces from the city – of around 100,000 inhabitants before the war – to better defend the neighboring city of Lysychansk. Both lie in the wider Lugansk region.
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Struik said civilians had started to evacuate the Azot chemical plant, where several hundred people had been hiding from Russian shelling.
‘These people have spent almost three months of their lives in basements, shelters. That’s tough emotionally and physically,’ he said, adding they would now need medical and psychological support.
Pro-Moscow separatists said Russian and pro-Russian forces had taken control of the Azot factory and ‘evacuated’ more than 800 civilians sheltering there.
The forces have ‘taken full control of the Azot plant industrial zone’, a separatist representative called Andrei Marochko said on Telegram.
Another separatist spokesman, Ivan Filiponenko, said that around 800 civilians who had taken refuge in the plant during weeks of fighting had been ‘evacuated’.
If the Russians also take Lysychansk, it would effectively give them control of the wider Lugansk region and allow them to push further into the wider Donbas.
In the Ukrainian-held Donbas town of Pokrovsk, Elena, an elderly woman in a wheelchair from Lysychansk, was among dozens of evacuees who arrived by bus from frontline areas.
‘Lysychansk, it was a horror, the last week. Yesterday we could not take it anymore,’ she said. ‘I already told my husband if I die, please bury me behind the house.’
As Europe’s biggest land conflict since World War Two entered its fifth month, Russian missiles also rained down on western, northern, and southern parts of the country.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent tens of thousands of troops over the border on Feb. 24, unleashing a conflict that has killed thousands and uprooted millions. It has also stoked an energy and food crisis that is shaking the global economy.
Since Russia’s forces were defeated in an assault on the capital Kyiv in March, it has shifted focus to the Donbas, an eastern territory made up of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.
Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk were the last major Ukrainian bastions in Luhansk.
The Russians crossed the river in force in recent days and have been advancing towards Lysychansk, threatening to encircle Ukrainians in the area.
The capture of Sievierodonetsk is likely to be seen by Russia as vindication for its switch from its early, failed attempt at ‘lightning warfare’ to a relentless, grinding offensive using massive artillery in the east.
Moscow says Luhansk and Donetsk, where it has backed uprisings since 2014, are independent countries.
It demands Ukraine cede the entire territory of the two provinces to separatist administrations.
Ukrainian officials had never held out much hope of holding Sievierodonetsk indefinitely, but have hoped to exact a high enough price to exhaust the Russian army.
Ukraine’s top general Valeriy Zaluzhnyi wrote on the Telegram app that newly arrived, U.S.-supplied advanced HIMARS rocket systems were now deployed and hitting targets in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.
Asked about a potential counterattack in the south, Budanov, the Ukrainian military intelligence chief, said that Ukraine should begin to see results ‘from August’.
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Author: Nwo Report
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