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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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He kept the kids alive for that he’s a hero
@Darren Farrell: Agree totally
Looks like other people in the club and Parents knew they were going to the Caves. From reports it was done before and was considered normal for the team
But whatever the reasons why they went down there, if it was not for him the outcome may have been very different and the parents have said near enough the same thing. He did a great job along with the rescuers. Great work by all and again, thoughts to the diver who lost his life doing what these people do when push comes to shove
@Darren Farrell: there’s a story that the boys went in on the own and when they didn’t return the coach went to look for them and found the bikes outside the cave. He went in to help get them out and stayed with them when he couldn’t get them out bcos of the water. He’s a hero. Typical western media, full of ..it
@Eamonn Connaghan: I looked this up, interesting, but I think it was the head coach who went looking when some team members were un-contactable about a match that evening.. and it was the head coach, Nopparat Khanthavong, who found the bicycles beside the cave entrance but the junior coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, seems to have been with the boys – but that does not make him any less a hero whichever side you read it – the story here is not quite clear did the junior coach follow the boys as he had been advised “Make sure you ride your bicycle behind them when you are travelling around, so you can keep a lookout,” – so there is certainly a good chance that he did not lead them regardless..
and have we not to rescue people every other week it seems, in Ireland, caught by the rising tides or other events….. still a hero no matter how it started
Fear of liability is one of the reasons why we have a growing problem with childhood obesity. Mr Chanthawong is a volunteer who kindly gave his spare time to help kids less fortunate than himself. At 25 the man is practically a child himself. I know when I was 25 I was probably passed out drunk somewhere rather than spend my Saturday mornings helping kids. He’s a hero.
@BlueSkyThinking:
Excellent point
@BlueSkyThinking: Fear of liability and the hours of garda vetting forms, child protection training, risk assessments, sports training and possibly first aid training to give up your own time to help other people’s kids. But then people who would never do anything can sit back and critize you.
The coach is an absolute hero!
He ration his supplies to help the kids alive instead of eating it himself he did a great job keeping the alive in darkness and water without him they won’t have survived (there will be critics saying he shouldn’t do that or this but maybe put them in a cave for 2 weeks and see what mental and physical properties it takes
The caves are used by kids all the time from the local area. It’s kinda like a place that they date each other to go into. The monsoon came a little early than expected.
Bunch of teenagers would of gone in there with or without the coach. They only survived because of his guidance under pressure. Plenty of armchair critics
@Anthony Healy: * dare, not date
@Anthony Healy: Oh I liked “date” better…. but thank you for the clarification — we do forget all the “silly” things we did as youngsters… “silly” in quotes because that are not silly really – without “adventure” the human race would get nowhere
Our politicians leave our children live on our streets and we re-elect them. Imagine an Irish politician minding those children. A TD would be first out of the cave.
@Cranky: a TD would have left them to it to fend for themselves!
@Cranky: please enlighten us as to how many children are left to live on our streets?
@offtheball: surely the number is only on the dozens, disregarding the thousands on the homeless list of course
@Cranky: yawn
He’s a good man who put the kids first. Hopefully he gets over this.
All is well that ends well.thank god.
@Braonain Proinseas: A man died trying to rescue them. It didn’t end well
@Kal Ipers: agreed.
Poor judgement to lead the group that deep in during the monsoon season and apparently there is warnings.
However it was heroic how he lead the group once trapped.
Can’t ignore that his error did lead to one death though.
@Kal Ipers: yes tragic and I’m very sorry, but I think my point was all the children got out safely.
@Lad_The: he led them so far in because they couldn’t get out because of the flash flooding!
@Simone Rapple: fair enuff if that’s true. I stand corrected.
@Lad_The: let’s wait and see the exact circumstances. There’s a lot of speculation around.
Typical western media
Thank god the children and coach survived and for the bravery of the rescuers-a good news story for a change
@Ger Foley: can’t agree Ger – the family of the dead man won’t see it as a good news story.
@offtheball: I’d be nearly sure you’re wrong. They like the rest of Thailand would have been praying for the safety of those boys and while I’m sure they’re not happy are probably able to take some consolation in their loss. When also taking into account he was retired military in a country regularly rocked by rebellions and border skirmishes it may be a loss they’d been prepared for for some time. Just speculating of course.
@Sweet George:
The writers can write anything, I’m sure none of the writers ever had the chance to hear it first hand from any of the 13 on who led whom or who followed whom. So I would read the article with a pinch of salt. But to judge him unfit to be in charge of the children while you never knew him is harsh. It was an unfortunate event when something out of norm to them (exploring the cave) turned to be so wrong. Because monsoon came early this year. But he has tried his best to keep the children alive. Look at how mentally strong and calm the children are when they were found. Experts expected them to take weeks to be strong enough to get out of there but they took only days that shows they were not broken. You have to give credit to that young man for doing a good job being their protector.
Media hoping he would make it out alive so they can slaughter him!
That cartoon is definitely inspired by the ribenaad.
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