L’Ukraine claimed on Sunday, June 5, to have retaken “half” of Sievierodonetsk and to progress in this key city of Donbass under intensive fire from Russian forces, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky went to the front in this region. to support his soldiers. In Sievierodonetsk, the Ukrainian army assures us that it is doing more than holding its own and that it is regaining ground. “Half the city is under the control of our defenders,” assured the governor of the Luhansk region, Serguiï Gaïdaï, in an interview broadcast on social networks, specifying that they are “progressing”.
We must expect, he added, citing interceptions of communications from the Russian command, an intensification of the Russian offensive to take the city “before June 10”. “We expect that, in the near future, all the reserves to which they have access, all the machines, all the troops, will be put to work to achieve” this objective, assured the governor.
For the Russians, getting their hands on the city would prove decisive for the complete control of the Donbass coalfield, already partly held by pro-Russian separatists since 2014. Ukrainian resistance in Sievierodonetsk “will probably continue to attract the attention of the forces forces over the Luhansk region and will therefore leave vulnerabilities in Russian defensive efforts in the Kharkiv region and along the southern axis,” the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) analyzed on Sunday.
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“Real Heroes”
Volodymyr Zelensky announced in his daily video message that he had visited his troops in Lyssychansk, a neighboring town of Sievierodonetsk. “We brought something to the army. I will not talk about it in detail,” he reported. The Head of State also visited Zaporijia, in the south of the country.
In addition to the regional authorities, he met residents of Mariupol who had managed to flee the Russian bombardments. “Each family has its own story. Most were without men,” he noted. “One’s husband has gone to war, another’s is in captivity, yet another’s, unfortunately, is dead. A tragedy. No home, no love. But we have to live for the children. True heroes, they are among us. »
If the fighting is concentrated in the south and east, particularly in Sievierodonetsk, “kyiv remains the main objective of the Russian occupier”, Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Malyar assured local media on Sunday, also asking for a “constant support” from the West. The Ukrainian capital was indeed hit by several Russian strikes on Sunday morning, for the first time since the end of April.
Forgery?
Moscow says it targeted a freight car repair workshop in the south-east of kyiv, 10 km from the city center, and destroyed there armored vehicles supplied to Ukraine by Eastern European countries. “High-precision, long-range missiles fired […] on the outskirts of kyiv destroyed T-72 tanks supplied by Eastern European countries and other armored vehicles that were in hangars, ”said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.
This was denied by Ukrainian officials and witnesses on the spot. “This is another example of Russian-made falsification to justify this brutal war against Ukraine,” Serhii Leshchenko, deputy director of the Ukrainian railway company’s supervisory board, told AFP.
In the evening, AFP was able to see the destruction of several hangars and a large crater caused by a shell, while firefighters were still trying to control a small fire. On Rossiya-1 television, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened with further strikes on “sites that[‘ils] not[ont] not targeted so far”, if the West supplied long-range missiles to Ukraine, which, according to him, aims to “prolong the conflict”.