Ukrainian forces are going to withdraw from Severodonetsk, surrounded for weeks, which implies an advance of Russian troops in the Lugansk regionin eastern Ukraine.
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The head of the Military Administration of the eastern region of Lugansk, Serhiy Haidai, announced Thursday that “unfortunately” his forces will have to withdraw their troops from the strategic enclave of Severodonetsk due to the Russian siege.
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“Unfortunately, we will have to withdraw our troops from Severodonetsk, because there is no point in being in broken positions – the death toll is growing,” Haidai said on his Telegram account.
Sevedoronetsk has been under siege for weeks by Russian troops, who consider it a key point to gain control of the region that, together with Donetsk, makes up the Donbas areawhere pro-Russian guerrillas act.
“The Russians have been shelling Severodonetsk almost every day for four months… The city’s infrastructure was completely destroyed, 90 percent of the houses were damaged or destroyed,” Haidai said.
Russia advances in Luhansk
Russia assured this Friday that in the last five days it has taken control of ten towns in the Lugansk region, in eastern Ukraine, where it is close to controlling the entire area, as only Lisichansk resists the Russian siege.
“As a result of the successful offensive operations of a group of Russian troops
In the direction of Lugansk, the settlements of Loskutovka, Pidlisne, Myrna Dolyna, Shchebkarier, Vrubivka, Nyrkove, Mykolayivka, Novoivanovka, Ustynivka and Rai-Oleksandrivka were liberated in five days,” military spokesman Igor Konashénkov said in his morning war report. .
Konsahénkov indicated, however, that “a group of Ukrainian troops has been completely blocked in the area of the Hirske and Zolote settlements.”
The spokesman maintained that four battalions are surrounded in Hirske’s encirclement.
Ukrainians, so that in total “up to 2,000 people have been blocked, including 80 mercenaries”.
russian wear
Russian forces have made substantial progress in the area of
Severodonetsk-Lisichansk, in the eastern region of Luhansk, in recent days and the Ukrainian troops continue to suffer heavy casualties, but have fundamentally achieved their objective in the battle by slowing down and wearing down the Russian forces.
This is estimated by experts from the American think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in their latest report.
“The Ukrainian authorities are establishing the conditions to prepare for the final loss of both Severodonetsk and Lisichansk,” the ISW said, for which this circumstance “will not represent a major turning point in the war.”
According to the think tank, “Ukrainian troops have for weeks managed to attract substantial amounts of Russian personnel, weapons and equipment to the area and have likely degraded the overall capabilities of Russian forces, while preventing them from concentrating on wider axes of advance.” advantageous”.
Ukraine and Europe
The Kremlin hopes that granting Ukraine and Moldova the status of candidate countries to enter the European Union (EU) will not cause more problems for Russia, the spokesman for the Russian Presidency, Dmitri Peskov, said on Friday.
According to the spokesman for the Russian Presidency, the decision of the EU leaders the day before
to grant these two countries the status of candidates to enter the community club “is an internal European matter”.
Peskov also expressed his hope that this measure “does not lead to a future worsening of our relations with the EU, since it is very difficult to spoil them further, they are already quite deteriorated.”
The spokesman pointed out that regarding Ukraine “everything is clear there”, but lamented that Moldova, “which wants to be more European than the Europeans themselves, goes to great lengths to take certain measures, and associates that status with anti-Russian positions”.
Kaliningrad
Russia blamed the United States for being behind the restrictions imposed by Lithuania on the transit of certain goods sanctioned by the European Union (EU) in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which Moscow describes as a blockade.
“It is no coincidence that the Western ban on rail transit of a wide range of cargo through Kaliningrad under the dictation of the White House Administration and the ban on a special flight to get our diplomats out of the US,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zajárova said in a statement.
Foreign Affairs already complained the day before that Washington refuses to authorize a Russian flight to repatriate the sanctioned diplomats declared persona non grata from the United States.
The US, like the European Union, closed US airspace to all private and commercial flights from Russia in March due to the Russian military campaign in Ukraine.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE
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