Fighting in the months-long war has favored Russia in recent weeks over its huge advantage in artillery, a fact acknowledged by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a speech late Tuesday. “Thanks to regular maneuvers, the Ukrainian army is strengthening its defense in the Luhansk region,” he said. “This is really the most difficult point. The occupiers are also pushing hard in the direction of Donetsk.” Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register The provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk together are known as Donbas, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. “And while we are actively fighting for a positive decision of the European Union on Ukraine’s candidacy status, we are also fighting daily for modern weapons for our country. We will not give up for a single day,” Zelensky said. urging his country’s supporters to speed up arms deliveries. In a symbolic decision, Ukraine will become the official candidate for membership in the European Union on Thursday, EU diplomats said. Russia’s failure to make a major breakthrough since invading Ukraine on February 24 means that time is on the side of the Ukrainians, according to some military analysts. “It’s a heavyweight boxing match. In two months of fighting, there has not been a knockout hit yet. It will come as the RU forces become more depleted,” said retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling , he wrote on Twitter.
“PREPARED CHALLENGES”
June 22 is an important date in Russia – the “Day of Remembrance and Sorrow” – which marks the end of Hitler’s Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II. His memory is also celebrated in Ukraine and neighboring Belarus, then part of the Soviet Union. The war there lasted 1,418 days from June 22, 1941, and historians estimate that some 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians were killed. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has launched a “special military operation” in Ukraine to eradicate the Nazis, will lay flowers to honor the dead. The Ukrainian government and its Western backers say Putin has used a false pretext to launch an unprovoked offensive against his neighbor. To mark the anniversary, the Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday released documents dating back to the beginning of World War II that allegedly showed Germany intending to claim that the Soviet army was bombing churches and cemeteries to justify its invasion. “As today, in 1941, the Nazis prepared provocations in advance to discredit our state,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. Russian forces and separatists in eastern Ukraine advanced on Tuesday, pushing for the city of Lysychansk, the main stronghold of Ukrainian forces in the Donbas. In some of the bloodiest battles in Europe since World War II, Russia has made slow progress in Donbas since April in a conflict that has claimed the lives of thousands of soldiers on both sides. The separatist Donetsk People’s Republic had acknowledged that more than 2,000 soldiers had been killed and nearly 9,000 wounded since the beginning of the year, according to the British military intelligence service. That equated to about 55% of its original strength, he said. Some of the fighting has taken place on the Siverskyi Donets River, which flows through the Donbas, with Russian forces mainly on the east bank and Ukrainian forces mainly on the west. However, Ukrainian troops – and about 500 civilians – are reportedly still holding on to a chemical plant in the east bank town of Sievierodonetsk. The governor of Luhansk province, Serhiy Gaidai, said the Russians were advancing on Lysychansk, attacking police, state security and prosecutors’ buildings, occupying settlements and attacking the city with aircraft. Oleskiy Arestovych, Zelenskiy’s adviser, said Russian forces could cut off Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk from Ukrainian-controlled territory. “There is a threat of a regular Russian victory, but they have not done so yet,” he said in an online video. The attacks took place in the northeastern Kharkiv region, with at least 15 civilians killed by Russian bombing, its governor said on Tuesday. “Russian forces are now hitting the city of Kharkiv in the same way they used to hit Mariupol – with the aim of terrorizing the population,” Arestovich said. “The idea is to create a big problem to distract us.” Reuters could not immediately confirm the accounts on the battlefield. In retaliation for Western sanctions, Russia has begun pumping lower volumes of gas into Europe via Ukraine. European Union states have outlined measures to tackle a post-invasion supply crisis that has put energy at the heart of an economic battle between Russia and the West. read more Russia warned Lithuania on Tuesday that it would face “serious negative impact” measures to block some rail shipments to Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave in the Baltic Sea. Estonia expressed its solidarity with Lithuania and summoned the Russian ambassador to protest a “very serious” violation of its airspace by a Russian helicopter. read more Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report from the Reuters office. Written by Grant McCool and Lincoln Feast. Edited by: Richard Pullin and Robert Birsel Our role models: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
