Azovstal shelling lasted all night, the Russian invaders storm the plant buildings The Special Operations Detachment “Azov”
Denys Karlovskyi May 13, 2022
SVIATOSLAV PALAMAR, CALL SIGN “KALYNA” IN THE BUNKERS OF AZOVSTAL. PHOTO: THE AZOV REGIMENT
Throughout the night of 13 May, the Russian invaders bombarded the Azovstal territory from artillery and aircraft; the metallurgical plant is currently being stormed by Russian infantry on armoured vehicles.
Source: Deputy commander of the Azov Regiment Sviatoslav Palamar, call sign “Kalyna” in comments to Ukrainska pravda
Quote from Kalyna: “The shelling continued all night. Aviation and artillery shelling.
The storm of the plant by infantry continues. That is, the infantry is storming with armored vehicles, tanks and artillery.”
Background:
On the morning of 13 May, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and adviser to the mayor of Mariupol Petro Andriushchenko confirmed that Russian infantry continue to storm the Azovstal plant.
Last night, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that negotiations were currently underway with the Russian invaders on the evacuation of the seriously wounded. The International Committee of the Red Cross is ready to evacuate.
Despite the devastating shelling and Russian blockade of exits from Azovstal’s underground bunkers, Ukrainian defenders continue to inflict significant losses on the Russian occupying forces in terms of personnel and equipment.
The Russian occupiers refused the extraction of the defenders of Mariupol by sea to a neutral country. They also said that after all the civilians were taken out of the bunkers, they supposedly had their hands “untied“.
Ukrainian forces thwart Russians at river as fight shifts to Donbas
Jonathan Landay – May 12, 2022
DERGACHI, Ukraine (Reuters) -Ukrainian forces destroyed parts of a Russian armoured column as it tried to cross a river in the Donbas region, video from Ukraine’s military showed on Friday, as Moscow appeared to be refocusing its assault in the east after a new pushback by Kyiv.
Ukraine has driven Russian troops away from the second-largest city of Kharkiv in the fastest advance since Kremlin forces pulled away from Kyiv and the northeast over a month ago, although Moscow is still bombarding villages north of Kharkiv.
The city, which had been under fierce bombardment, has been quiet for at least two weeks and Reuters journalists have confirmed Ukraine now controls territory stretching to the Siverskyi Donets River, around 40 km (25 miles) to the east.
Some 10 km (six miles) north of the city, firefighters doused smouldering wreckage in Dergachi after what local officials said was an overnight Russian missile attack on the House of Culture, used to distribute aid. Volunteers inside were trying to salvage packages of baby diapers and formula.
“I can’t call it anything but a terrorist act,” the mayor, Vyacheslav Zadorenko, told Reuters. “They wanted to hit the base where we store provisions and create a humanitarian catastrophe.”
Another missile had slammed into the building on Thursday and Russian shelling had wounded a staff member at a clinic and killed a young couple in their home, he said.
Russia, which denies targeting civilians, said its forces had shot down a Ukrainian Su-27 aircraft in the Kharkiv region and disabled the Kremenchuk oil refinery in central Ukraine.
It was not immediately possible to verify the reports.
Southeast of Kharkiv, Britain said Ukraine had stopped Russian forces crossing the Siverskyi Donets river west of Severodonetsk. Footage released by Ukrainian Airborne Forces Command appeared to show several burnt out military vehicles near segments of a partially submerged bridge and many other damaged or abandoned vehicles, including tanks, nearby.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report, or when or where the clash took place.
The British defence ministry said Russia was investing significant military effort near Severodonetsk and Izium, and trying to break through towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk to complete their takeover of Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region.
Russian-backed separatists said they had taken the Zarya chemical plant in Rubizne near Severodonetsk.
The Kremlin calls its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation” to demilitarise a neighbour threatening its security. Ukraine says it poses no threat to Russia and that the deaths of thousands of civilians and destruction of cities and towns show that Russia is waging a war of aggression.
CHILDREN
Ukraine accused Russia of forcibly deporting more than 210,000 children since its invasion on Feb. 24, saying they were among 1.2 million Ukrainians transferred against their will.
The Kremlin says people have come to Russia to escape fighting.
In Kyiv, a court began hearing the first case of what Ukraine says are more than 10,000 possible war crimes; a Russian soldier is accused of murdering a civilian soon after the invasion. Moscow has accused Kyiv of staging such crimes.
In the southern port of Mariupol, Russian forces intensified their bombardment of the Azovstal steelworks, the last bastion of Ukrainian defenders in a city almost completely controlled by Russia after a siege of more than two months.
Reuters video showed explosions and thick smoke on Thursday and Ukrainian fighters released footage showing gunbattles. Some of the civilians evacuated recently from tunnels under the plant where they had taken shelter described terrifying conditions.
“Every second was hellish,” 51-year-old nurse Valentyna Demyanchuk told Reuters.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told 1+1 television negotiations were underway for the evacuation of wounded troops.
RUSSIAN SHIP SET ALIGHT
Renewed fighting around Snake Island in recent days could help Ukraine resume grain exports vital to world supplies, some of which are now being shipped by rail.
“There are 25 million tonnes of grain currently blocked in the Ukrainian port of Odesa, which means food for millions of people in the world that is urgently needed,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.
Ukraine said it had damaged a Russian navy logistics ship near Snake Island, a small but strategic outpost that Ukrainian military intelligence said allows control of civilian shipping. Russia’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Satellite imagery from Maxar, a private U.S.-based company, showed the aftermath of what it said were probable missile attacks on a Russian landing craft near the island, which became famous for the foul-mouthed defiance of its Ukrainian defenders early in the invasion.
NATO EXPANSION
In Germany, Foreign ministers from the G7 group of rich nations met to discuss a planned EU embargo on Russian oil as well as fears the conflict could spill over into Moldova.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the meeting he hoped EU holdout Hungary would agree to the oil embargo and asked the G7 to hand over Russian assets to help Ukraine rebuild.
“We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. Russia must pay,” he told reporters.
A day after Russia’s northeastern neighbour Finland committed to applying to join NATO, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said membership for her country would have a stabilising effect and benefit countries around the Baltic sea.
Joining the 30-nation Western military alliance would end the neutrality the two states maintained throughout the Cold War and further the expansion of NATO that Putin said his invasion of Ukraine aimed to prevent. NATO member Turkey said it did not support the idea, throwing doubt over the process.
Moscow called Finland’s announcement hostile and threatened retaliation, including unspecified “military-technical” measures, but said a newspaper report the Kremlin might cut gas supplies to Finland was mostly likely a “hoax”.
Russian supplies of energy to Europe remain Moscow’s biggest source of funds and Europe’s biggest source of heat and power.
(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Natalia Zinets, Tom Balmforth and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Stephen Coates, Simon Cameron-Moore and Philippa Fletcher; Editing by Nick Macfie and Raissa Kasolowsky)
The war in the Kharkiv region, costly to both sides, is “now a game of hawk and mouse, where each side’s drones circle constantly, trying to pinpoint the enemy’s tanks and guns, for targeting by artillery,” BBC correspondent Quentin Sommerville reports from one newly recaptured village.
The fight has mostly involved the two sides “lobbing artillery shells at one another, sometimes from dozens of miles away,” New York Times correspondent, Michael Schwirtz reports from the Kharkiv front lines. “But at some points along the zigzagging eastern front, the combat becomes a vicious and intimate dance, granting enemy forces fleeting glimpses of one another as they jockey for command of hills and makeshift redoubts in towns and villages blasted apart by shells.”
“Ukrainian gains, modest for now, could have strategic implications for Russia’s war in the Donbas to the southeast,” the BBC’s Sommerville reports. Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian lines within a handful of miles from Russia’s borders in some places — Ukrainian shelling killed a Russian civilian in a village six miles into Russia, the governor of Belgorod region said — threatening to cut off the main ground supply routes for Russia’s eastern offensive.
“Russia’s prioritization of operations in the Donbas has left elements deployed in the Kharkiv Oblast vulnerable to the mobile, and highly motivated, Ukrainian counter-attacking force,” Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an early Thursday intelligence update. Russia “has reportedly withdrawn units from the region to reorganize and replenish its forces following heavy losses,” and “once reconstituted,” they will likely deploy to “protect the western flank of Russia’s main force concentration and main supply routes for operations in the vicinity of Izium.”
As residents return to the recaptured villages, “many have been shocked by the scale of destruction,” the Times reports. “Cars have been blown to pieces. Homes have been shattered by heavy artillery. … Bodies are scattered around the once peaceful town.” And as soon as the Russians leave, forensic investigators come in to document Russian war crimes, The Washington Post reports. “Imagine an episode of CSI — and there’s a war going on, too.”
Life in a Ukrainian Unit: Diving for Cover, Waiting for Western Weapons
Andrew E. Kramer – May 12, 2022
A Ukrainian soldier at a short-range artillery position in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine monitors Russian movements in the distance on Friday, May 6, 2022. (David Guttenfelder/The New York Times)
PRYVILLIA, Ukraine — Through binoculars, the Ukrainian soldiers can see the Russian position far in the distance. But the single artillery weapon they operate at a small, ragtag outpost on the southern steppe has insufficient range to strike it.
These circumstances have imposed a numbingly grim routine on the Ukrainians, who are pounded daily by Russian artillery salvos while having no means to fight back. Every few hours, they dive into trenches to escape shells that streak out of the sky.
“They have our position fixed, they know where we are,” said Sgt. Anatoly Vykhovanets. “It’s like we are in the palm of their hand.”
As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy makes almost daily pleas to the West for heavier artillery, it is positions like the one here on the west bank of the Dnieper River that most illustrate how critical that weaponry is for Ukraine. Military analysts say the battle now is riding not so much on the skill or bravery of Ukrainian soldiers, but on the accuracy, quantity and striking power of long-range weapons.
The artillery capability of the two armies near Pryvillia is so lopsided in Russia’s favor that Ukrainian officials have specifically highlighted the region to Western officials and member of the U.S. Congress in their appeals for more military support.
In response, Western allies have been trying to rush artillery systems and associated equipment into Ukraine, and it is starting to arrive. But not as quickly as Ukrainian officials have wanted, especially in places like this small outpost in the south.
The United States announced plans to send 90 M777 howitzers, a system capable of shooting 25 miles with pinpoint accuracy, but it was only this week that the first one in this region was fired in combat, according to a video the military provided to a Ukrainian news outlet.
Other American weapons Ukraine is counting on include drones for spotting targets and correcting artillery fire and tracked armored vehicles used for towing howitzers into position even under fire.
On Monday, President Joe Biden signed the Lend-Lease Act, which would allow transfers of additional American weaponry to Ukraine, and on Tuesday night the House of Representatives approved a $40 billion aid package.
But for now at the outpost of Ukraine’s 17th Tank Regiment, in a tree line between two fields, the most soldiers can do is try to survive.
To do so, they appoint a listener around the clock. He stands, like a prairie dog on guard, in the center of the unit, listening for the distant boom of Russian outgoing artillery. The warning is “air!” Soldiers have about three seconds to dive into a trench before shells hit.
The Ukrainian army does fire back from artillery operating to the rear of this position but has too few weapons to dislodge the Russian gun line.
Throughout the war, Ukraine’s army has demonstrated extraordinary success in outmaneuvering and defeating Russian forces in the north, relying on stealth and mobility to execute ambushes against a bigger, better equipped army. But in southern Ukraine, in an area of pancake-flat farm fields cut by irrigation canals, the Ukrainians are fighting a different sort of war.
On the steppe, the swirling, fluid front lines of the two armies are spaced miles or dozens of miles apart, over an expanse of gigantic fields of yellow rapeseed, green winter wheat, tilled under black earth and tiny villages.
Occasionally, small units slip into this buffer zone to skirmish, and to call in artillery strikes on one another, using sparse tree lines as cover. “There is no place to hide,” said the commander of a reconnaissance brigade who is deploying units into these fights. He asked to be identified only by his nickname, Botsman.
“It’s like looking down at a chess board,” he said. “Each side sees the other sides’ moves. It just depends on what striking force you have. Everything is seen. The only question is, can you hit that spot?”
Soldiers on both sides call artillery guns that can do just that by a nickname, “the gods of war.”
Ukraine entered the war at a disadvantage. Russia’s 203-millimeter Peony howitzers, for example, fire out to about 24 miles while Ukraine’s 152-millimeter Geocent guns fire 18 miles. (Soviet legacy artillery systems, used by both sides, are named for flowers; Carnation and Tulip guns are also in play in the war.)
That’s why Ukrainians so desperately wants the American howitzers; their 25-mile range while firing a GPS-guided precision round would, in some places, tilt the advantage slightly back to them.
“The Russians have two advantages now, artillery and aviation,” said Mykhailo Zhirokhov, the author of a book about artillery combat in the war against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, “Gods of Hybrid War.” “Ukraine needs artillery and anti-aircraft missiles. These are the critically important on the front.”
The Ukrainian military has insufficient quantity of even medium-range artillery, such as weapons that might hit back at the Russian gun line harassing the Ukrainian unit about 9 miles away. The Russians are in a rock quarry, visible through binoculars as a gray smudge in the distance.
Hundreds of craters pock the fields all around. The soldiers operate a short-range, anti-tank artillery gun of little use against the Russian position that is out of range.
But the soldiers still serve a purpose: They can stop a tank assault using their short-range anti-tank artillery weapon, preventing Russian advances — so long as they endure the daily barrages. So far, nobody in the unit has been wounded or killed. That leaves the front in stasis, following two months in which Ukrainian forces advanced about 40 miles in this area.
Russia cannot capitalize on its artillery superiority to advance. Its tactic for attacking on the open plains is to hammer the opposing positions with artillery, then send armored vehicles forward on a maneuver called “reconnaissance to contact” aimed at overwhelming what remains of the defensive line.
But because of Ukraine’s wealth of anti-armor missiles and weapons, Russia cannot advance and seize ground.
Ukraine, meanwhile, also cannot advance, though its tactics differ. The Ukrainian military relies on small unit infantry with armored vehicles playing only supporting roles. Though Ukraine could seize ground, it could not hold it or use it for logistical support for further advances, as any new territory would remain under Russian bombardment.
The planned Ukrainian advance in this area depends on the arrival of the M777 howitzers and other long-range Western artillery that can hit the Russian artillery in the rear. Then, Ukrainian infantry might advance under the artillery umbrella of these longer range systems.
Should more powerful artillery arrive, it could quickly tip the scales, said Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskyy’s chief of staff.
In the fighting on the west bank of the Dnieper River, Russia’s objective appears to be tying down Ukrainian forces that might otherwise shift to the battle for the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s goal, once it obtains artillery able to match the range of Russian guns, is to move over the fields to within striking range of two bridges and a dam crossing the Dnieper River in an operation that could cut supply lines of the Russian forces, Arestovich, the presidential adviser, said.
“We would do it with pleasure,” said Col. Taras Styk, a commander in the 17th Tank Brigade. “But now we have nothing that can hit them.”
Despite everything, Azov in Mariupol continues to knock the invaders out of their positions
Kateryna Tyschenko – May 12, 2022
Soldiers of the Azov Regiment, despite the significant predominance of enemy forces and a lack of ammunition, continue to knock out the invaders from their captured positions at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol.
Quote: “On the 78th day of the full-scale war, totally surrounded, despite an extremely difficult situation, lack of ammunition, and a large number of wounded, the soldiers of the Azov Regiment continue to knock out the enemy from their previously captured positions on the territory of the Azovstal plant.
The Defenders of Mariupol are storming enemy positions, doing the impossible, despite the enemy’s constant use of aircraft, naval and tubed artillery, tanks and other weapons.”
Details: Azov posted a video of Ukrainian soldiers attacking the invaders.
Background:
The Russian occupiers refused to allow the extraction of defenders of Mariupol by sea to a neutral country. They also said that after all the civilians had been removed from the bunkers, “the gloves would be off“.
Russian troops storm Azovstal with the use of aircraft, ships, and ground forces.
The Russians block exits from underground bunkers where Ukrainian defenders are hiding, but even so, the Ukrainian military launches successful counter-attacks against them.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk declared that Ukraine is ready to exchange captured Russians for seriously wounded soldiers in the dungeons of Azovstal.
Russian invaders attempting offensives on multiple fronts, reports Ukrainian military
May 12, 2022
Destroyed Russian tank
Russian forces are attempting to conduct offensives in the Lyman, Sievierodonetsk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Kurakhiv directions in the Donbas simultaneously, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a Facebook post on May 12.
Their main goal appears to remain the establishment of full control over the town of Rubizhne, and capture the towns of Lyman and Sievierodonetsk.
“In the Lyman direction, the enemy crossed the Siversky Donets River to bring over their main forces and conduct an offensive,” the Ukrainian military said. “In the direction of Siversk, they’re advancing in the direction of Zelena Dolyna and Novoselivka. Fighting continues.”
The Russian military transported pontoon bridge materials from Russian territory in order to ford the river. The Ukrainian military noted that in the Sievierodonetsk direction, the enemy is advancing in the direction of Kudriashivka and Sievierodonetsk itself with partial success.
In the Bakhmut direction, the enemy is storming Pervomaisk and Komyshuvakha. Combat there is ongoing. In the Avdiivka direction, the invaders are storming Novobakhmutivka and Novokalynove.
In the Kurakhiv direction, the enemy is advancing in the directions of Stepne – Novomykhailivka, Slavne – Novomykhailivka, and Oleksandrivka – Maryinka, where they are meeting resistance from Ukrainian defenders.
“In Mariupol, the main efforts of the occupiers are focused on blockading and trying to destroy our units in the area of the Azovstal plant,” the General Staff reported, adding that Russian forces continue to conduct airstrikes on the territory of the factory.
At the same time, Russian forces are regrouping troops in the Slovyansk direction to resume the offensive on Barvinkove and Slovyansk, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a Facebook post on May 12.
The enemy has redeployed the battalion tactical group to strengthen the advanced units.
“In order to replenish the units that suffered casualties and provide logistical support to the group of troops, the enemy moved about 300 units of weapons and military equipment to the designated area,” the Ukrainian military said.
In the Slobozhansky direction, the enemy is regrouping troops in order to prevent the further advance of Ukrainian troops in the direction of the state border.
According to a post by the SBU in Telegram messenger, in order to restore order to its units, Russia has sent “experienced punishers” to Ukraine, such as General (Rustam) Muradov, known for his brutality after commanding a joint Russian force in Syria.
“The company commanders did not want to send their soldiers to their deaths. And the guys themselves were not ready. He (Muradov) theatrically punished the company commanders yesterday, stripped them, they emptied their pockets, he tied their hands behind their backs, loaded them into trucks and took them away.”
But despite these shows, the reluctant company commanders were later returned to their posts.
Russia has been facing a considerable manpower shortage, especially among the officer corp., exacerbated both by targeted Ukrainian strikes against officers and the lack of available officers pre-invasion.
Russia is resorting to putting computer chips from dishwashers and refrigerators in tanks due to US sanctions, official says
Bill Bostock – May 12, 2022
A destroyed Russian T-90M Proryv battle tank seen in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on May 9, 2022.REUTERS/Vitalii Hnidyi
The US says Russia is putting chips from home electronics in tanks due to the effect of sanctions.
Russia’s military relies heavily on technology made by the US and allies, who have banned exports.
The US commerce secretary said Wednesday that sanctions “cripple” Russia’s ability to fix equipment.
Russia is having to use computer chips intended for home appliances to repair its military hardware due to the impact of US sanctions, according to a US official.
“We have reports from Ukrainians that when they find Russian military equipment on the ground, it’s filled with semiconductors that they took out of dishwashers and refrigerators,” commerce secretary Gina Raimondo told the Senate Committee on Appropriations on Wednesday.
Raimondo recently met with Ukrainian officials who told her that they found parts from refrigerators and commercial and industrial machines when searching captured or abandoned Russian tanks, The Washington Post reported.
Raimondo told the committee that exports of US technology to Russia have fallen by just under 70% as a result of sanctions, the first of which were imposed in late February.
Russia’s military hardware has long relied on technology made by the US or its allies, but US tech companies are now forbidden from exporting their products to Russia.
“Our approach was to deny Russia technology — technology that would cripple their ability to continue a military operation. And that is exactly what we are doing,” Raimondo told the committee.
The White House said Sunday that US sanctions are stymieing Russian attempts to repair equipment.
“Russia is struggling to replenish its military weapons and equipment. Russia’s two major tank plants — Uralvagonzavod Corporation and Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant — have halted work due to lack of foreign components,” it said.
Ukrainian forces have shared abundant evidence that Russia is struggling to equip its forces adequately.
Speaking on Monday, the UK’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, said that wrecked Russian fighter jets were being found by Ukraine with rudimentary GPS receivers “taped to the dashboards” because their inbuilt navigation systems are so bad.
EU moves to help Ukraine export grain as Russia blocks sea routes
Jan Strupczewski – May 12, 2022
Illustration shows Ukrainian and Russian flags and grain
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission said on Thursday it would work with EU governments to help Ukraine export millions of tonnes of grain stuck in the country because the Russian navy is blocking Ukrainian ports.
Ukraine was the world’s fourth-largest grain exporter in the 2020/21 season, International Grains Council data shows, selling 44.7 million tonnes abroad, mainly to China, Africa and Europe. It is also one of the biggest producers of sunflower oil.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 90% of the grains and sunflower oil were shipped out through Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea – a route now closed off. Problems with getting the grain out of Ukraine threaten to cause a food crisis, especially in poorer regions like Africa.
“20 million tonnes of grains have to leave Ukraine in less than three months using the EU infrastructure,” EU Transport Commissioner Adina Valean said.
“This is a gigantesque challenge, so it is essential to coordinate and optimise the logistic chains, put in place new routes, and avoid, as much as possible, bottlenecks.”
Getting Ukrainian produce out quickly by train is a challenge too, because the Ukrainian rail system has a different width of tracks from Europe, so the grain has to be transferred on the border onto different trains. To makes matters worse, there are not many such transfer facilities on the border.
The Commission called on transport companies to provide more vehicles, lorries and freight rolling stock and said it would itself set up a match-making logistics platform to assign free transport resources to demand.
The Commission said Ukrainian agricultural export shipments should be prioritised at terminals and infrastructure managers should make rail slots available for these exports. It called for companies to urgently transfer mobile grain loaders to the relevant border terminals to speed up transhipment.
The Commission will also look into guarantees for trucking companies to insure the vehicles they send into Ukraine and called on EU governments to apply maximum flexibility at border crossings, with staffing adequate to accelerate procedures.
Finally the Commission will assess available storage capacity in the EU and coordinate with EU governments to secure more capacity for temporary storage of Ukrainian exports.
(Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Ediitng by Mark Potter)
Ukraine says it blew up Russian pontoon bridges over a key river — and units trying to cross it
Patrick Galey and Sara Mhaidli – May 12, 2022
Ukraine’s military says it blew up a key Russian crossing on the Siverskyi Donets River on its eastern front, inflicting heavy losses in a potentially significant blow to the Kremlin’s designs on the regions of Luhansk and Kharkiv.
Images shared by the defense ministry appeared to show a ruined pontoon crossing with dozens of destroyed or damaged armored vehicles on both banks.
“Artillerymen of the 17th tank brigade of the #UAarmy have opened the holiday season for [Russian forces],” the ministry said on Twitter. “Some bathed in the Siverskyi Donets River, and some were burned by the May sun.”
Kyiv’s strategic communications directorate tweeted images of smoking wreckage and two ruined bridgeheads, and said that the army’s 80th Separate Assault Brigade had “destroyed all attempts by the Russian occupiers to cross” the river.
The Siverskyi Donets, which flows from southern Russia through the separatist Ukrainian regions of Kharkiv and Luhansk, has become a key barrier against Russia’s attempts to shore up the territory it has seized since invading in February.
Images released by Ukrainian armed forces appear to show Russian tanks destroyed along a dirt track by the river. (Ukrainian Armed Forces )
Ukraine’s military on Wednesday said that Russian forces had been trying to gain full control over Rubizhne, a city of 55,000 people on the eastern bank of the river, and were conducting an offensive on Lyman, some 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) further west.
“[The] Russian enemy is trying to hold positions on the right bank of the Siversky Donets River,” it said.
Britain’s defense ministry said Thursday that despite early successes in Kharkiv, Russia had in recent days begun moving units to the eastern flank of the Siverskyi Donets in order to “reorganize and replenish its forces following heavy losses.”
In April, Ukraine blew up a bridge in the neighboring Kharkiv region in an attempt to stop Russian advances.
“Russia has been working on the encirclement of Ukrainian forces,” said William Alberque, director of strategy, technology and arms control at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which is based in London.
“The Ukrainians blew a couple of critical bridges to prevent this. The Russians then created this pontoon bridge, creating a bottleneck with lots of equipment.”
He said the details in the images of the site — which showed severe but concentrated damage — suggested a highly accurate use of heavy artillery guided by drones or nearby ground forces.
Serhiy Haidai, a Ukrainian military official in Luhansk, was quoted in local media as saying the pontoon attack took place on Russian units seeking to cross the river near the town of Bilohorivka and close to the Lysychansk-Bakhmut highway, a key Ukrainian supply route.
“Bilohorivka is now an outpost of Luhansk oblast where Ruscists keep trying to cross the river, but end up feeding the fish,” he said.
Alberque said that although Russia lost a number of armored personnel carriers in the attack, that was unlikely to change the course of the conflict in Kharkiv and Luhansk.
“I think this will significantly affect operations in the region for a while, but it’s not as if Russia is short” of the carriers, he said.
The Siverskyi Donets pontoon attack may instead offer clues as to the tactics being deployed by both sides.
“Ukraine is using geography, they’re using rivers, anything they can to force the Russians into choke points, and then attacking those choke points when they become permissive targets,” Alberque said.
“To have this many vehicles in this small a space this close to the Ukrainians shows incredibly poor discipline from the Russians.”
