2022-05-27 15:53:16 / UPDATED /
Military: 1,500 dead in Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine
Kiev, May 27, (dpa/GNA) - According to official Ukrainian figures, around 1,500 people have been killed in the particularly hard-fought eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk since the beginning of the war.
Among them were soldiers as well as civilians, the head of the local military administration, Oleksandr Stryuk, said on Friday.
Many people have also fled. Of the former 130,000 inhabitants, only about a 10th are still there.
The governor of Luhansk, Serhii Haidai, also reported that four people had been killed by Russian shelling on the residential areas of Sievierodonetsk the day before.
More than three months after the start of the Russian war, the large city of Sievierodonetsk is one of the last parts of Luhansk still controlled by the Ukrainian army. Not far from the city limits, however, there is already fierce fighting.
Observers fear that Ukrainian brigades in Sievierodonetsk could be encircled by Russian and pro-Russian military forces.
According to a local politician, dozens more bodies of residents have been found in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, which has now been taken over by Russian troops.
Rescue workers discovered a total of around 70 lifeless bodies on a former factory site, Mariupol city council deputy Petro Andriushchenko wrote on the Telegram messaging service on Friday.
The people were buried under the rubble when Russian occupiers shelled the building, he wrote. This information could not be verified at first.
Mariupol, which was besieged by Russian troops for weeks and finally captured, has become an international symbol of the brutality of the Russian war.
Russian and pro-Russian military forces laid siege for weeks to the Azovstal steelworks, where the last Ukrainian defenders had entrenched themselves. More than a week ago, the more than 2,400 men and women surrendered. They are now in Russian captivity.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fears a largely depopulated Donbass region, made up of the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk - in the face of massive Russian attacks in the east.
With their superior firepower, the attacking Russian troops put pressure on the Ukrainian defenders around Sievierodonetsk, he said in his evening video address in Kiev late Thursday.
"The ongoing offensive of the occupiers in the Donbass could make the region deserted," Zelensky said.
Towns would be destroyed, people killed or abducted. This, he said, was "an obvious policy of genocide."
Advances are taking place in the Donbass, according to the British intelligence report, where Russian ground forces continue to try to encircle Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk. In the process, several villages north-west of Popasna had been captured, it said.
The town of Lyman in the Donestsk region is also now under Russian control after pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine declared they have captured it.
Lyman lies to the west of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.
With its fall, it is becoming more difficult to supply the Ukrainian military in the area. At the same time, the danger of encirclement is increasing.
So far, the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk have "liberated and gained full control over 220 localities, including Krasny Liman, with fire support from Russian forces," the separatist forces' staff announced on Friday, according to the Interfax news agency.
Krasny Liman dates back to Soviet times. The Ukrainian military has not yet confirmed the fall of the town.
However, Ukrainian presidential advisor Oleksii Arestovych had already described the strategically important town as lost on television the previous evening.
In the past few days, Russian forces have advanced much faster in the Donbass region than in the weeks before, thanks to massive deployment of artillery and air power.
Russia's military also confirmed attacks on the eastern Ukrainian regions of Kharkiv and Donetsk.
Rockets were fired at a Ukrainian brigade in the fiercely contested town of Bakhmut in Donetsk, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Friday.
In the Kharkiv region, military objects were also fired at with rockets.
The Ukrainian side had already reported several deaths from Russian shelling in Kharkiv on Thursday.
Friday is the 93rd day of war. Russia had attacked neighbouring Ukraine on February 24.
After failing to make advances on the capital Kiev and in other areas of Ukraine, Russia pulled back to concentrate its efforts on taking the separatist-dominated areas in the east and the south of the country.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed on Friday that Germany is committed to supporting Ukraine.
Putin must not be allowed to get away with his "cynical, inhuman war," he said. The war was not directed against Ukraine alone, but against the values of Western democracy in general, he said.
GNA
GNA
