Kiev, Ukraine (AP) – After weeks of intense fighting, Ukrainian forces are evacuating from a besieged city in the east of the country to avoid a siege, the region’s governor said Friday.
The city of Siyevierodonetsk, the administrative center of the Luhansk region, has been the subject of relentless Russian bombing. Ukrainian troops fought the Russians in door-to-door battles before retreating to a large chemical plant on the edge of the city, where they were trapped in vast underground buildings.
In recent days, Russian forces have stepped up around Sievirodonetsky and the nearby town of Lisichansk, on a steep river bank, to besiege Ukrainian forces.
Luhansk governor Sergei Haidai said Ukrainian troops had been ordered to leave Sievierdonetsk to avoid it.
“We need to pull our kids back,” he said. “It makes no sense to stay in destroyed positions, because the number of deaths in poor fortified areas will increase every day.”
Haidai said Ukrainian forces had been “ordered to retreat to new positions and continue fighting there,” but did not provide further details.
He said the Russians were also advancing on Lisichansky from Zolote and Toshkivka, adding that Russian intelligence units were conducting attacks outside the city but were driven out by its defenders.
The governor added that the highway bridge to Lisichansk was badly damaged in a Russian air strike and became unusable for trucks. The claim cannot be independently verified.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Friday that four Ukrainian battalions and a unit of “foreign mercenaries” out of a total of approximately 2,000 soldiers were “completely blocked” near Hirsk and Zolot, south of Lisichansk.
In the early stages of the aggression, which began on February 24, following a failed attempt in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, Russian forces shifted focus to the Donbas region, where Ukrainian forces are fighting separatist -backed of Moscow since 2014.
The Russian army controls approximately 95% of Luhansk Oblast and half of the neighboring Donetsk province, the two areas that make up Donbass.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksky Reznikov said the response came in the form of US medium-range missile launches.
A U.S. defense official confirmed on Wednesday that all four promised high-mobility missile systems, or HIMARS, were in the hands of Ukrainian forces, but said it was not known whether they would be used.
The United States approved the delivery of the precision-guided systems in late May, and once they found themselves in the region, Ukrainian forces needed approximately three weeks of training for their operations. The missiles can travel approximately 45 miles (70 kilometers).
The United States will send an additional $ 450 million in military aid to Ukraine, including four other medium-range missile systems, ammunition and other supplies, U.S. officials said Thursday.
In other developments:
An employee of the Promoskov administration in the southern city of Kherson, who was captured by Russian troops at the start of the aggression, was killed in an explosion on Friday.
Kherson’s pro-Russian regional administration said Dmitry Savlyuchenko was killed when his car exploded in what it called a “terrorist attack”.
There is no immediate liability.
Source: Huffpost
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