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Mayor Says Syevyerodonetsk Has Fallen To Russian Forces, Escape Routes Blocked

["Rfe Rl'S Ukrainian Service"]

Date: 2022-06

The mayor of Syevyerodonetsk said the strategic Ukrainian city is now under full Russian control and that all exit routes to Ukrainian-held territory are blocked, leaving escape possible only through Russian-occupied areas.

"The city is now under the full occupation of Russia," Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk said on national television late on June 25.

"They are trying to establish their own order. As far as I know they have appointed some kind of commandant," he said, adding that it was "impossible" to leave the city to Ukrainian-held territory, stranding some 10,000 civilians.

Russia continued to target areas across Ukraine with artillery and missile strikes, hitting military facilities in the west and north and continuing to pound key battleground cities in the eastern Donbas region.

Russia's revised military focus on Ukraine's east has brought Moscow closer to reaching its objective of capturing the Donbas, which is composed of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The continued bombing of targets far from the front lines have led to accusations that Russia is trying to sow fear among civilians and draw neighboring Belarus into the conflict.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, the plight of civilians and refugees, and Western aid and reaction. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

"48 cruise missiles. At night. Throughout whole Ukraine," Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak wrote on Twitter on June 25. "Russia is still trying to intimidate Ukraine, cause panic and make people afraid."



In the west, officials in Lviv said that Russian forces had launched six missiles from the Black Sea and that four struck a military facility close to the Polish border.



Large missile attacks were also reported in the Zhytomyr and Chernihiv regions in Ukraine's north.



Ukraine's northern military command wrote on Facebook on June 25 that 20 rockets that struck the Chernihiv town of Desna were fired from the air and from Belarusian territory, prompting Ukraine's intelligence service to accuse Russia of trying to drag Minsk into the war.



"Today's strike is directly linked to Kremlin efforts to pull Belarus as a co-belligerent into the war in Ukraine," the intelligence service said on Telegram.



Belarus has provided support for Russia's war effort in Ukraine, but officially remains a nonbelligerent.



In the east, the focus of Moscow's revised military strategy as the war enters its fifth month, Russian troops are on the cusp of taking full control of the Donbas. Parts of both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions have been under the control of pro-Russia separatists since 2014, when Russia also invaded and annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.



Russian artillery and air strikes on June 25 continued to rain down on two battleground cities in the Luhansk region: Syevyerodonetsk as well as Lysychansk, located across the Siverskiy Donets River.

Earlier in the day, Serhiy Hayday, the head of the Luhansk region military administration, wrote on Telegram that a chemical plant in Syevyerodonetsk where dozens of civilians are sheltering was being shelled.

Ukrainian forces were ordered on June 24 to withdraw from the city, where weeks of street fighting and intense shelling have reduced much of the city to rubble. Ukraine sees the withdrawal as an opportunity to regroup to new positions and limit casualties, while Russia is likely to view the development as a significant victory.

Hirske, a key district about 35 kilometers south of Lysychansk, was "fully occupied" by Russian forces on June 24, while Hayday reported the same day that Russian troops had taken control of Mykolaivka, situated near a highway to Lysychansk.



The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on June 25 that Ukrainian troops had repelled attacks near Bakhmut, which lies in the Donetsk region along an important supply route to Lysychansk.



Russia's focus on Ukraine's east was prompted by Moscow's failure to take the capital, Kyiv, in the first phase of the war following its February invasion. In recent weeks, Russia has gained a significant artillery advantage in the east and has slowly but surely gained Donbas territory.



To stabilize the situation in the east, Ukraine's top general told his U.S. counterpart on June 24 that his country desperately needs "fire parity" with Moscow.



"We discussed the operational situation and the delivery flow of international technical assistance," General Valeriy Zaluzhniy wrote in an online posting after holding a phone call on June 24 with General Mark Milley, the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.



Kyiv has received billions of dollars in aid from its Western partners since Moscow’s unprovoked invasion. And on June 23 the United States announced $450 million in additional military aid for Kyiv, including four more HIMARS long-range multiple-rocket launchers, tens of thousands of rounds of artillery ammunition, and patrol boats.

WATCH: Despite there being an exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant since the catastrophic 1986 disaster, people live in the area. On the first day of the war they found themselves facing a new danger, as Russian tanks rolled through their villages -- and opened fire.

Ukraine's leadership has expressed gratitude for the contributions. On June 25, the military said U.S. HIMARS were already being used effectively, but they say much more is needed.



Fierce fighting has stretched both sides' personnel and equipment resources to the limit, with Kyiv repeatedly pleading with the West for more heavy weapons and Russia facing increasing difficulties in bringing qualified personnel to the front line.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, an outspoken backer of Ukraine in its war with Russia, said he feared Kyiv could face pressure to agree to a “bad peace” deal with Moscow, a move that would lead to a long-term global “disaster.”

“Too many countries are saying this is a European war that is unnecessary...and so the pressure will grow to encourage -- coerce, maybe -- the Ukrainians to a bad peace," Johnson told reporters during a visit to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, to attend a Commonwealth summit.

That would “be a disaster” and would “be a trigger for further escalation by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin whenever he wanted,” Johnson said.

“There is no question that there is a lot of Ukraine fatigue now in the world, but I think they are going to win. I know they are going to win,” he said. “It is their country. They are fighting for it desperately hard. But they need to be properly supported.”

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, BBC, and CNN

[END]

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