Ukraine said on Monday it had fend off the latest attack on an eastern city that has become the main target of Russia’s offensive since Russian forces finally took Mariupol last week.
A statement from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office said Russian forces tried to occupy Sievierodonetsk but were unsuccessful and withdrew.
The city on the banks of the Siverskiy Donets River has become Russia’s top target in recent days as Moscow tries to encircle Ukrainian forces in the east and completely capture the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk.
In Mariupol, where hundreds of Ukrainian fighters laid down their arms last week after a nearly three-month siege, Russian mine clearance teams were searching for the remains of steel giant Azovstal.
A huge armored tractor painted with the white letter “Z”, symbolic of Russia’s offensive, pushed the debris aside, while a small group of soldiers slid through the wreckage with metal detectors.
A Russian soldier nicknamed Babai said, “The task is huge. The enemy has planted its own land mines, while we are blocking the enemy, we also planted anti-personnel mines. So we have about two weeks of work ahead of us.” .
“More than a hundred explosives have been destroyed in the last two days. Work continues.”
An aide to the Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol, which now operates outside the entirely Russian-controlled city, said the remaining residents were at risk of illness as sewage overflowed among the ruins. Ukraine believes tens of thousands died in the siege of the city of more than 400,000 people.
“Mariupol needs another evacuation of residents due to the growing threat of epidemics,” Petro Andryushchenko told Telegram. “The consequences of turning Mariupol into a ghetto will be disastrous. The threat of an epidemic is real with every storm.”
Three months after Russia’s February 24 invasion, air raid sirens sounded in Ukraine on Monday morning, ahead of attacks by Russian forces in the east and south of the country, which Moscow said was a special operation aimed at “authorizing” the country.
Russia has focused its “special military operation” to the east since its troops were expelled from the region around the capital Kyiv and in the north of the country in late March.
Since last month, Moscow has said its main effort is to seize all of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, known as the Donbass, which Russia claims on behalf of pro-Moscow separatists.
source: Noticias
