Destruction in Sievierodonetsk, the easternmost city held by Ukraine, amid weeks of Russian attacks

Sunday’s Coverage: Ukrainians Still Hold Part of Sievierodonetsk

Source: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1506 GMT:

Ukraine police have opened criminal proceedings over the deaths of more than 12,000 Ukrainians.

The head of national police, Ihor Klymenko, said about 1,200 bodies, including those found in mass graves, have not yet been identified.

In Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel, Borodianka there were a lot of killed people lying right on the streets – snipers shot them from tanks, from armored personnel carriers, despite the white armbands that the Russian military forced people to wear.

Klymenko said about 75% of the dead are men, 23% are women, and 2% children.

UPDATE 1138 GMT:

Ukrainian officials say Russian occupiers steal more than 3,200 tons of iron ore from plants in the Zaporizhzhia oblast in southern Ukraine, including 54 freight cars in the village of Mala Bilozirka.

UPDATE 1129 GMT:

The office of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is requesting 500 tanks and 1,000 howitzers from NATO to defeat the Russian invasion.

Kyiv is also asking for 200-300 multiple rocket launchers, 2,000 armored vehicles, and 1,000 drones.

Advisor Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted:

UPDATE 0614 GMT:

A former Vice President of Russia’s Gazprombank has joined the Ukrainian army.

Igor Volobuev initially participated in the territorial defense of Kyiv and has now enlisted in the all-Russian Freedom of Russia Legion.

A video on Telegram showed Volobuev participating in exercises on a shooting range. He says:

Dreams come true: I now serve in the Legion “Freedom of Russia”….

If you hate the Putin regime and want Russia to become a free, democratic country, join.

Volobuev is a native of the Sumy region in northeast Ukraine, where his father and younger brother still live. In April, he left for Kyiv, joining the defense in order to “wash himself off the Russian past”.

He says his accounts in Russia have been blocked and his savings confiscated.

UPDATE 0608 GMT:

Russian forces have killed one woman and wounded five people by dropping banned cluster munitions on a residential area in the Kryvyi Rih region of Dnipropetrovsk in east-central Ukraine, according to the head of the regional military administration.

UPDATE 0603 GMT:

Russian forces have pushed Ukrainian defenders out of the center of Sieverodentsk in eastern Ukraine, says a spokesman for the Ukraine General Staff.

Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai echoed the report of a Russian advance “due to a significant advantage in artillery” as they destroyed the city “quarter by quarter”.

Haidai said several shells struck the sewage treatment plant and the Azot industrial area, where civilians are sheltering, was shelled three times.

He added that three people were killed in Lysychansk on Sunday, including a six-year-old boy, and one person was injured.

UPDATE 0547 GMT:

Russia earned $98 billion from fossil fuel exports during the first 100 days of its invasion of Ukraine, with an average price about 60% higher than last year.

The report from the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air assessed that the European Union was the customer for 61% of the exports. Germany ($14.9 billion), Italy ($9.6 billion), and the Netherlands ($9.6 billion) followed China ($15.5 billion) as the top purchasers.

France also boosted Moscow by increasing imports “to become the largest buyer of LNG [liquefied natural gas] in the world,” said the Centre.

UPDATE 0514 GMT:

Russian missile strikes on Saturday injured 22 people in Chortkiv in the Ternopil region in western Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials said the missiles hit civilian infrastructure sites and a natural gas pipeline.

Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed the destruction of a “large depot of anti-tank missile systems, portable air defence systems and shells provided to the Kyiv regime by the US and European countries” — an assertion denied by Ukrainian officials who said no weapons were stored on attacked sites such as residential buildings.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said:

There was no tactical or strategic sense in this strike, as in the vast majority of other Russian strikes. This is terror, just terror.

Among the victims is a 12-year-old girl from Kharkiv. She went to the Ternopil region to flee from the Russian army. And such facts will now determine perception of Russia in the world. Not Peter I or Lev Tolstoy, but children wounded and killed by Russian strikes.

UPDATE 0500 GMT:

Amnesty International has documented Russian war crimes with the use of banned cluster munitions, killing or injuring hundreds of civilians, in attacks on Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv.

The group also cited the Russian use of other types of unguided rockets and unguided artillery shells, and of scatterable land mines, combining “the worst possible attributes of cluster munitions and antipersonnel land mines”.

The Kharkiv Military Administration said 606 civilians have been killed and 1,248 wounded in the region since the invasion began on February 24.

Russian forces carried out “relentless” shelling for two months, as they attempted to overrun the city in northeast Ukraine, about 40 km (25 miles) from the border. Ukrainian forces held out, driving back the Russians, but occasional shelling and missile strikes continue.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Russian forces are trying again to surround the devastated city of Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine, blowing up two of three bridges across the Siverskyi Donets River to the nearby city of Lysychansk and heavily shelling the third.

After weeks of bombardment and ground assaults, the Russians hold part of Sievierodonetsk, which with Lysychansk are the last major cities held by Ukraine in the Luhansk oblast. However, Ukrainian defenders still hold the Azot industrial zone, including a chemical plant where about 500 civilians — including 40 children — are sheltering.

Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai wrote on Telegram on Sunday, “The Russians are making every effort to cut off Sievierodonetsk. The next two or three days will be significant.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy echoed, in his nightly address to the nation, “The key tactical goal of the occupiers has not changed: they are pressing in Sievierodonetsk, severe fighting is ongoing there – literally for every meter.”

Oleksandr Voronenko, a military police officer in Lysychansk, said, “If there is no help with military equipment, of course they will drive us out. Because everyday the equipment is destroyed. You have to replace it with something new.”

But the US-based Institute for the Study of War questions the latest tactic of the attackers: “Russian forces should, in principle, be seeking to seize the bridges rather than destroy them, since Russian troops have struggled to cross the Siverskyi Donetsk River.”

The ISW notes that the Russians may be seeking to trap the Ukrainian forces in Sievierodonetsk, “but it seems unlikely that the benefit of catching a relatively small number of defenders would be worth the cost of imposing a contested river crossing on Russian troops”. The analysts suggest that the offensive will try to attack on the city from other directions, such as from Toshkivka or Popasna.

About 10,000 civilians are trapped in the city, which had a pre-invasion population of about 100,000.

Source: Institute for the Study of War