Waterloo Region Record

Fighting grinds on in the east

Ukraine says it repelled Russian attack on Severodonetsk — ‘It is hell there,’ says Zelenskyy

OLEKSANDR STASHEVSKYI AND CIARAN MCQUILLAN

KYIV, UKRAINE Ukrainian authorities said Friday that their troops repelled a Russian attack in the east, as Moscow struggled to gain ground in the region that is now the focus of the war even while intensifying its campaign there.

Battered by their monthslong siege of the vital port city of Mariupol, Russian troops need time to regroup, Britain’s Defence Ministry said in an assessment — but they may not get it. The city and the steelworks where Ukrainian fighters have held off the Russian assault for weeks have become a symbol of Ukraine’s stoic resistance and surprising ability to stymie a much larger force.

On Friday, a number of soldiers — just how many was unclear — were still holed up in the Azovstal plant, following the surrender of more than 1,900 soldiers in recent days, according to the latest figure from Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. Efforts to remove the dead from the battle were also underway, according to Denis Prokopenko, the commander of the Azov Regiment, which is among those defending the plant.

Speaking of the “fallen heroes,”

Prokopenko said: “I hope soon relatives and the whole of Ukraine will be able to bury the fighters with honours.” The Red Cross, meanwhile, said it has visited prisoners of war from all sides of the conflict, amid international fears that the Russians may take reprisals against Ukrainian prisoners.

With the battle for the steel plant winding down, Russia has already started pulling troops back from the site. But the British assessment indicated Russian commanders are under pressure to quickly send them elsewhere in the Donbas.

“That means that Russia will probably redistribute their forces swiftly without adequate preparation, which risks further force attrition,” the ministry said.

The Donbas is now President Vladimir Putin’s focus after his troops failed to take the capital in the early days of the war. Pro-Moscow separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for eight years in the region and held a considerable swath of it before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.

But the effort to take more territory there has been slow-going. In a sign of Russia’s frustration with the war, some senior commanders have been fired in recent weeks, the British Defence Ministry said. In other developments:

■ Russia will cut off natural gas to Finland on Saturday, the Finnish state-owned energy company said. Poland and Bulgaria were cut off late last month, as Moscow tries to use its energy exports to hit back at Western countries that are helping Ukraine. The moves comes after Finland and Sweden applied for membership in the NATO alliance.

■ A young Russian soldier, accused of killing a Ukrainian civilian, awaited his fate in Ukraine’s first war crimes trial. Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin, a 21-year-old soldier in a

Russian tank unit, has pleaded guilty.

■ The G7 agreed this week to provide more money to bolster Ukraine’s public finances, bringing the total aid to $19.8 billion, Germany’s finance minister said Friday.

On Friday, a governor in the Donbas said Russian forces attacked the cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk. Twelve people were killed, and more than 60 houses were destroyed across the region, Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said in a Telegram post.

But the attack on Severodonetsk was unsuccessful. Both Haidai and Ukraine’s General Staff of the military said Russia took losses and retreated. Their reports could not be independently verified.

Still, Russia’s struggles in the east only seemed to translate into an intensifying offensive that is inflicting increasing suffering.

“It is hell there, and that’s not an exaggeration,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said of the campaign.

“The brutal and completely senseless bombardment of Severodonetsk. Twelve dead and dozens wounded there in just one day,” he said in his nightly video address Thursday night to the nation.

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2022-05-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

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