Ukraine’s strategic dilemma in Sievierdonetsk: resist and fight or back off?

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine – Just to enter Sievierodonetsk, Ukrainian soldiers fire a series of Russian artillery shells aimed at the only access route:

a bridge littered with the burnt remains of cars and trucks that didn’t make it.

And once inside the city in eastern Ukraine, the hub of both armies in recent weeks, Ukrainian soldiers are fighting the Russians in a back-and-forth battle for control of the country. deserted and destroyed neighborhoods.

Ukrainian leaders now face a key strategic decision whether to withdraw from the medium-sized city and take more positions defensibleor stay and risk being locked up if the bridge is blown up.

It reflects the choices the country has had to make since the beginning of the Russian invasion, between giving up ground to avoid short-term death and destruction and resisting against all odds in the hope that then it will be worth it.

In Sievierdonetsk, that calculation took on significance beyond the town’s limited military significance.

In comments to reporters on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky referred to Sievierdonetsk and its neighbor across the river, Lysychansk, as “dead cities “ devastated by Russian attacks and almost devoid of civilians.

Still, he insisted there was a compelling reason to stay and fight:

The position of Ukraine during the war was what he intended keep their sovereign territory and not deliver it to Moscow.

Retreating now to better positions on higher ground across the Seversky Donets River, and then fighting to recapture the city later, he said, would be more difficult and it would have a higher price in bloodshed to bear.

“It will be very expensive for you to go back, in terms of the number of people killed, the number of casualties,” Zelensky said.

“Our heroes do not give up their posts in Sievierdonetsk,” he added.

“The fierce urban fighting continues in the city”.

It was a rare public reflection by Zelensky on strategic decision-making in warfare, which provided a clue to the goals of his government and military.

Sievierdonetsk is the last major city in the breakaway Luhansk region that the Russians have not conquered; capturing it would give them almost total control of that enclave.

There are other factors as well.

Falling back could be demoralizing for the Ukrainian forces.

And some Ukrainian soldiers have said that it is worth extending the urban combat phase to inflict more casualties to Russian forces already depleted and possibly damaging their morale.

It’s also possible that Zelensky was helping the military in bad direction by signaling intent while silently pursuing an opposite course of action.

The government did not say how many military casualties Ukraine has suffered since the Russian president, Vladimir Putinordered the invasion in February.

But Zelensky said last week that in recent heavy fighting his country was losing between 60 and 100 soldiers dead and 500 wounded every day.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that 6,489 Ukrainian soldiers have been captured.

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry this week estimated civilian casualties to be 40,000 killed or injured, although some government officials say the real numbers are higher.

Ukrainian officials said Tuesday that the rupture of water and sewer pipes in the southern Russian-occupied city of Mariupol after a devastating siege created the risk of major epidemics that would increase the number of civilian casualties.

The battle for Sievierdonetsk, part of Lugansk and the wider Donbas region to the east, has been raging for weeks, with some Ukrainian soldiers wondering why the army didn’t order a tactical retreat.

“They are killing a lot of our boys,” said a soldier who asked to be identified only by his nickname, Kubik, interviewed last week while smoking along a street in the town of Siversk, a rest area west of the fighting.

He had recently moved away from positions near Sievierodonetsk.

“Let them get a little closer, let them think they have conquered the city, and then we will meet them beautifully” from a privileged point of view, he said.

The city is located on the mostly flat eastern bank of the Seversky Donets.

The west bank, by contrast, sits on a prominent hill that offers impressive views and shooting locations.

At the start of the war, Ukrainian soldiers were surrounded in Mariupol and fought for weeks, eventually retreating to occupy only a small space in a steel factory complex where they took refuge in bunkers, before Zelenskyy ordered the reluctant to surrender instead of be killed.

Ukrainian commanders have decided to avoid a small-scale version of that siege earlier this week in Sviatohirsk, a town on the lower bank of Seversky Donets.

Trying to trap Ukrainian troops in the city, Russia had fired artillery on the only remaining route across the river, a bridge near an Orthodox monastery that was also frequently attacked.

On Monday, the Ukrainian army withdrew, blowing up the bridge and taking up a position on the upper bank of the river, Ukrainian officials said.

Sievierodonetsk was once a sleepy provincial backwater of around 100,000 people, with poplar-lined streets and a skyline dominated by the chimneys of a fertilizer factory.

It is now a largely abandoned ruin where battle lines often swing, with each side sometimes claiming to have driven the other out of one part of the city.

On Tuesday, Serhiy Haidai, the Ukrainian military governor of the Luhansk region, said Russian forces are once again taking sides.

“The struggle continues,” he said.

Russian artillery fire towards the possible reserve position on the upper bank, where Lysychansk is located, was also fierce.

The bombing hit a market, a mining academy and a school, Haidai said.

The attack on the market caused a fire that broke out on Monday.

Two civilians were injured.

The Ukrainian government has stressed the weakness of its positions in the battle for Donbas, the mining and agricultural region now largely controlled by Russian forces.

The critical access bridge in Sievierdonetsk is a spectacle of destruction, demonstrating the difficulty and risk for Ukraine to keep even a part of the city.

A video recorded by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty reporters who entered a refueling raid last week showed the chaos in progress:

crossing it meant intertwining between the carcasses of the burnt cars and the bullet craters in the deck of the bridge.

The rubble has been building up in the past two weeks.

In an interview in late May, a soldier at a sand-padded checkpoint on the western edge of the bridge warned that Russian artillery observers had the span, then free of debris, under observation and were opening fire. every time a car was passing.

Two other bridges over the city were destroyed in early May.

Haidai partly justified Ukraine’s efforts to detain Sievierdonetsk symbolic resistance.

“Strategically, the city of Sievierdonetsk is not of great importance,” he said over the weekend.

The opposite high bank is more important militarily, he said.

“But politically, Sievierdonetsk is a regional center.

His release will substantially boost our morale and demoralize the Russians. “

However, Zelensky said he was open to reconsidering his decision based on events.

Either commanding, holding position, or retreating had potential drawbacks, he said.

“In the first option there is the risk, in the second option there is the risk,” he said.

Oleksandr Chubko contributed to this report.

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