L’Russian army tightened Thursday, June 2 its hold in eastern Ukraine, its priority objective in this war which allowed it to get its hands on 20% of the country, according to kyiv. Three months after the start of the invasion, Russian forces currently control “about 20%” of Ukrainian territory, or nearly 125,000 square kilometers, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday.
Before the invasion, Russian or pro-Russian forces controlled 43,000 square kilometers there, since the annexation of Crimea and the capture of a third of Donbass in 2014. Since February 24, they have notably advanced in the east and to the south, along the Black and Azov Seas, now controlling a strategic coastal corridor linking the Russian East with Crimea.
After the failure of their lightning offensive to bring down the government in kyiv, the Russian forces are concentrating on the conquest of Donbass, where a war of attrition is now being played out, particularly around the strategic city of Sievierodonetsk. And Moscow’s steamroller tactic of slowly nibbling ground seems to be paying off.
Sievierodonetsk, a “new Mariupol”
“The most difficult situation” concerns Lugansk, one of the two regions of Donbass, underlined the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces Valeri Zalouzhny, quoted in an army press release published overnight from Wednesday to Thursday. Sievierodonetsk, the administrative capital of the region, is “80% occupied” by Russian forces and fighting is raging in the streets, said the governor of the Luhansk region, Serguiï Gaïdaï, on the night of Wednesday to Thursday.
Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday evening in his daily message that the situation in the Donbass had not “changed significantly during the day”. “We had some successes in the battle for Sievierodonetsk. But it is still too early. This is the most difficult area at the moment,” he said, referring to a similar situation in the surrounding area, particularly in Lyssytchansk and Bakhmout.
Ukrainian leaders have in recent days accused Moscow of wanting to make Sievierodonetsk a “new Mariupol”. Russian pressure also remains significant on Donetsk, the other Donbass region, in particular Sloviansk, some 80 km west of Sievierodonetsk. Residents of the region lack gas, water and electricity in particular, according to kyiv.
Heavy losses for the Ukrainian army
Ukraine is awaiting deliveries of more powerful missile launcher systems promised by US President Joe Biden, hoping this will change the balance of power on the ground. Russia said on Thursday that it had stopped the influx of foreign “mercenaries” wanting to fight alongside the kyiv army, by dint of inflicting heavy losses on them in recent weeks.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the number of foreign fighters has been “almost halved”, from 6,600 to 3,500, and a “large number” of them “prefer to leave” the country “as quickly as possible”. possible “. Russian forces are bombing railway lines in the Lviv region (west), where weapons delivered to Ukraine by Western countries arrive in particular, aid denounced by Moscow.
Ukrainian forces are losing up to 100 soldiers every day, according to the Ukrainian president. “The situation in the East is really difficult […] We are losing 60 to 100 soldiers a day, killed in action, and some 500 are injured,” he said. In the South, the Ukrainians are worried about a possible annexation of the regions conquered by the Russian forces, Moscow evoking referendums as early as July.
New sanctions to come against Moscow
In Mykolaiv, near Odessa, Russian bombardments left at least one dead and several injured in the civilian population, the Ukrainian command of the southern region said Thursday evening. On the diplomatic front, EU countries on Thursday approved a sixth sanctions package against Moscow including an embargo, with exemptions, on oil purchases but waived blacklisting the head of the Russian Orthodox Church , Patriarch Kirill, under pressure from Hungary.
The text must still receive the written agreement of each member state with a view to its publication on Friday in the Official Journal to allow the entry into force of the measures, specified the French presidency of the Council of the EU. Russian Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Alexander Novak reacted by assuring that the Europeans would be the first to “suffer” from this oil embargo.
“European consumers will be the first to suffer from this decision. Not only the prices of oil, but also those of petroleum products will increase. I do not exclude that there is a large deficit of petroleum products in the EU,” said Alexander Novak.
“A war of attrition” which will last “many months”
In the United States, the Biden administration announced a new series of sanctions targeting a series of new oligarchs or members of the “elite” of Moscow, including the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy Maria Zakharova. “I am grateful to President Biden, all our American friends and the people of the United States for their support,” Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday evening.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday after a meeting with President Biden in Washington that Western countries had to prepare “for a war of attrition” in the “long term” “We must be prepared for the long term. Because what we see is that this war has now become a war of attrition,” he noted.
The war in Ukraine “could end tomorrow, if Russia put an end to its aggression,” Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday at a press conference alongside the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken. But “we don’t see any signs in that direction at this stage,” he added. The war led by Russia in Ukraine will last “many months”, Antony Blinken had abounded.
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