Heavy fighting broke out on Saturday in Lysychansk, which pro-Russian separatists say is under siege, but the Ukrainian military denies this and says it continues to hold out in the most important city it controls in the Donbass basin (east).
“The fighting around Lysychansk is intense. Fortunately, the city is not surrounded and is under the control of the Ukrainian army,” said Ruslan Muzychuk, spokesman for the Ukrainian National Guard.
A representative of the “Luhansk People’s Militia” had recently assured that this separatist force and Russian troops “occupied the last strategic positions, which allows us to say that the city of Lysychansk was completely surrounded”.
In addition, Ukraine has condemned “deliberate Russian terrorism” and renewed calls for Western anti-missile systems after the deadly attacks in the Odessa region.
At least 21 people were killed, including a 12-year-old boy, by three Russian missiles that destroyed “a large building” and “a tourist complex” in the Russian capital Serhiivka on Friday, according to Ukrainian military and civilian officials. On the Black Sea coast, about 80 km from Odessa, in southern Ukraine.
“This is deliberate Russian terror and not mistakes or an accidental missile strike,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday night, and local officials assured him that “there was no military target” where the attacks took place.
In response to Ukraine’s accusations, the Kremlin assured that “Russia’s armed forces are not operating against civilian targets” in Ukraine, a reaction that Berlin described as “inhuman and cynical”.
According to Kiev, 38 people, including five children, were injured, two seriously, in the attacks in Serhiivka.
Describing Russia as a “terrorist state”, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba said, “I urge our partners to supply Ukraine with missile defense systems as soon as possible. Help us save lives.”
“Heavy Losses”
According to the Ukrainian military, the shells used against Serhiivka were Soviet cruise missiles from the Cold War and designed to attack aircraft carriers. at least 19 people.
Zelensky admitted that the situation was “extremely difficult” in Lysychansk, where, according to local governor Serguiï Gaïdaï, most of the fighting was intensifying and the Russians were trying to “encircle” the Ukrainian army “from the south, east and west”.
On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that its forces had “reached the Lysychansk entrance” and inflicted “heavy losses” on the Ukrainian army.
Lysychansk is the last major city not yet in Russian hands in the Luhansk region, one of the two provinces of Donbass.
About forty kilometers further west, in the Donbass, Sloviansk, a Russian-held city not far from Izium and Lyman, a rocket attack hit houses on Friday night, killing and injuring a woman in her garden. A neighbor told an AFP journalist of her husband’s.
According to the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, four civilians have been killed and 12 injured in Sloviansk since Friday morning.
“Rockets Day and Night”
Sloviansk has been experiencing rocket fire day and night for at least a week, hitting residential areas.
Image: REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
Responding to Ukraine’s requests for additional weapons, the Pentagon announced on Friday $820 million in new military aid to Kiev, including up to 150,000 155mm rounds, new missiles for the recently arrived Himars multiple rocket launchers, and NASAMS air. defense systems.
In response, Norway announced aid in the form of a donation of around 960m euros that would allow Kiev to purchase weapons.
Faced with a Russian naval blockade that prevents it from exporting its wheat, Ukraine asked Turkey on Friday to intercept a Russian freighter suspected of carrying thousands of tons of grain stolen by Russia, departing from the occupied port of Berdiansk. Moscow.
The Ukrainian military claimed in a supporting video on Friday that the Russian army had bombed the Island twice with Phosphorus bombs, exemplary of the grain war imposed by Moscow that has worried many African countries that depend on Ukrainian wheat for food security. The Serpents of Serpents, an islet in the Black Sea off the coasts of Ukraine and Romania, necessary to control maritime traffic, which Moscow had assured the day before it had withdrawn as a “sign of goodwill”.
Meanwhile, Kyiv claims that the Russians were driven out by repeated Ukrainian attacks.
On the diplomatic front, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen addressed the Kyiv parliament via video on Friday, urging Ukraine to step up anti-corruption reforms as part of its bid to join the bloc.
It also welcomed the adoption of a law to combat the “excessive influence of the oligarchs on the economy” and called for the adoption of “a media law that brings Ukrainian laws in line with European Union standards”.
source: Noticias
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