LAST UPDATE | 19 Apr 2022
RUSSIAN FORCES ATTACKED along a broad front in eastern Ukraine today as part of a full-scale ground offensive to take control of the country’s eastern industrial heartland in what Ukrainian officials called a “new phase of the war”.
Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian forces are focusing their efforts on taking full control of the Donbas region.
“The occupiers made an attempt to break through our defences along nearly the entire frontline,” the General Staff said in a statement on Tuesday.
The stepped-up assaults began on Monday along a front of more than 300 miles, focused on the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, with the Russian forces trying to advance in several sections, including from the neighbouring Kharkiv region.
In southern Donetsk, the General Staff said the Russian military has continued to blockade and shell the strategic port city of Mariupol and fire missiles at other cities.
Russia’s defence minister today said Moscow is seeking to “liberate” east Ukraine, but accused the West of dragging out the military operation by supplying Kyiv with arms.
“We are gradually implementing our plan to liberate the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics,” Sergei Shoigu said in reference to eastern Ukraine’s rebel regions, adding that Washington and its allies were trying to “drag out” the campaign through their weapons supplies.
‘We will defend ourselves’
On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address that a “significant part of the entire Russian army is now concentrated on this offensive”.
Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas and have declared two independent republics that have been recognised by Russia.
Russia has declared the capture of the Donbas to be its main goal in the war since its attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, failed.
“No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight,” Zelenskyy vowed. “We will defend ourselves.”
Troops battled in the streets of Kreminna on Monday before Russia was able to gain control of the city, according to Serhiy Haidai, Luhansk regional military administrator.
Haidai said that before advancing, Russian forces “just started levelling everything to the ground”. He said his forces retreated to regroup and keep fighting.
The breakthrough at Kreminna brings the Russians closer to the city of Slovyansk, which is seen as a key target in the Russian offensive. Slovyansk was seized by pro-Russian fighters in 2014, only to be retaken by Ukrainian forces months later following intense fighting.
Russian troops have already seized the city of Izyum, which sits north of Slovyansk, and they are poised to push toward the city from the north and the east. Slovyansk lies just north of another key city, Kramatorsk, where an earlier Russian attack on a train station killed more than 50 people.
On Monday morning, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, told Ukrainian media that the defensive line had not been broken elsewhere.
“Fortunately, our military is holding out,” Danilov said.
Mariupol
In Mariupol, Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard, said in a video message that Russia had begun dropping bunker-buster bombs on the Azovstal steel plant where the regiment was holding out.
The sprawling plant contains a warren of tunnels where both fighters and civilians are sheltering. It is believed to be the last major pocket of resistance in the shattered city.
Russia has the besieged port city of Mariupol surrounded and has been fighting a bloody battle to seize it.
If Russia takes Mariupol, it would free up troops for use elsewhere in the Donbas, deprive Ukraine of a vital port, and complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Russia today called on Ukrainian forces to “immediately lay down arms” and issued a new ultimatum for the defenders of Mariupol to give up their resistance.
The Russian defence ministry called on Kyiv to show “reason and give the corresponding orders to fighters to cease their senseless resistance”, adding that defenders of Mariupol would be “guaranteed survival” if they laid down their arms starting at noon local time (9am Irish time).
In western Ukraine near the Polish border, at least seven people were reported killed on Monday in missile strikes on Lviv.
Lviv has been a haven for civilians fleeing the fighting elsewhere. And to the Kremlin’s increasing anger, the city has also become a major gateway for Nato-supplied weapons.
The attack hit three military infrastructure facilities and an auto shop, according to the region’s governor, Maksym Kozytskyy.
A hotel sheltering Ukrainians who had fled the fighting in other parts of the country was also badly damaged, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said.
“The nightmare of war has caught up with us even in Lviv,” said Lyudmila Turchak, who fled with two children from Kharkiv in the east.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, was hit by shelling on Monday that killed at least three people, according to Associated Press journalists on the scene.
Shelling could be heard overnight and into Tuesday morning in the major eastern city, which has been struck numerous times but remains firmly in Ukrainian control.
Moscow said its missiles struck military targets in eastern and central Ukraine including ammunition depots, command headquarters, and groups of troops and vehicles.
It reported that its artillery hit hundreds of Ukrainian targets, and that warplanes conducted 108 strikes on troops and military equipment. The claims could not be independently verified.
General Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British Army, told Sky News that Russia was waging a “softening-up” campaign ahead of the Donbas offensive.
A senior US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s assessments of the war, said there are now 76 Russian combat units, known as battalion tactical groups, in eastern and southern Ukraine, up from 65 last week.
That could translate to around 50,000 to 60,000 troops, based on what the Pentagon said at the start of the war was the typical unit strength of 700 to 800 soldiers.
US President Joe Biden will today convene a meeting of allies to discuss the conflict, the White House said.
The meeting, announced on Biden’s schedule, “is part of our regular coordination with allies and partners in support of Ukraine,” an official told AFP, without naming who would be included on the video call.
It will also cover “efforts to hold Russia accountable”, the White House said.
The WHO said today it was struggling to deliver two generators to hospitals in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, fearing the worst for its hard-hit health system.
The World Health Organization said it was trying to pre-position supplies closer to the frontlines to speed up delivery if a window opens.
The WHO is hoping to deliver 15 generators to hospitals across Ukraine, from a base in the western city of Lviv.
Two were due to head to the eastern city of Kharkiv today, while another three are destined for the Lugansk and Donetsk regions in the east, which have seen heavy fighting.
Two more were for Mariupol, also in the east, WHO Europe spokesman Bhanu Bhatnagar told reporters in Geneva via videolink from Lviv.
Meanwhile, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney will address the UN Security Council following his visit to Ukraine.
Coveney had visited Kyiv and the scene of a massacre of civilians at Bucha last week – making him the first foreign minister from a state on the Security Council to visit Kyiv since the start of the war.
Contains reporting from © AFP 2022
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