LAST UPDATE | 1 Oct 2022
RUSSIAN TROOPS HAVE “withdrawn” from the strategic town of Lyman in the Donetsk region, according to Moscow’s defence ministry.
“In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, the allied troops were withdrawn from the settlement of Krasny Lyman to more favourable lines,” Russia’s defence ministry said in its daily briefing.
Ukrainian forces had pushed across the Oskil River as part of a counter-offensive that saw Kyiv retake vast swathes of territory beginning in September.
Lyman, a key transportation hub, had been an important site in the Russian front line for both ground communications and logistics.
It lies in the north of Donetsk, which Moscow annexed despite only controlling part of the region.
With that barrier overcome, Ukraine can potentially push further into the occupied Luhansk region, which is one of four regions that Russia annexed yesterday after an internationally criticised referendum vote at gunpoint.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern forces, Serhiy Cherevatyi, said this morning that several thousand Russian troops were “encircled” near Lyman.
The Kremlin-backed leader of Donetsk said yesterday that Russian troops and their allies were holding on to Lyman with “their last strength”.
Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian territories makes it “much more difficult, nearly impossible for the war to end,” according to the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
He told a forum in Spain today that “Russia is losing” the war. It “has lost in moral and political terms,” but “Ukraine has not yet won.”
He said Europe has constructed “a garden” that is “surrounded by the jungle”.
“If we don’t want the jungle to invade the garden … we need to get involved,” he said, calling for the EU to beef up its military arsenal.
“This is necessary and indispensable for survival,” he said.
24 civilians killed
Ukraine has accused Russian forces of gunning down 24 civilians, including children, in an attack on a road convoy near the recently recaptured town of Kupiansk.
Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov put the preliminary death toll at 24, including, he said, a pregnant woman and 13 children, alleging: “Russians fired on the civilians at close range.”
The Kharkiv region prosecutor’s office said: “On September 30 prosecutors, investigators of the Security Service and the police discovered a convoy of seven cars that had been shot.
“The car queue was shot by the Russian army on September 25, when civilians were trying to evacuate,” the statement alleged.
“Two cars have burnt completely with children and their parents inside – they burnt alive,” it said.
Ukrainian officials have launched an investigation and allege that the Russian forces that were driven out of Kyrylivka last Sunday were behind the war’s latest apparent massacre.
“The occupiers are being defeated on the battlefield and desperately respond by killing civilians,” said the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Vasyl Malyuk.
On Friday, AFP reporters counted the bodies of at least 11 civilians in the wrecked cars, some burned beyond recognition.
Ukrainian troops operating nearby said they had found the dead on an exposed section of road alongside a rail track, as defeated Russian forces retreated from the area.
World Bank funding
The World Bank has announced $530 million in supplemental funding for Ukraine to enable it to “meet urgent needs created by Russia’s invasion.”
The support, in the form of a new loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, is being guaranteed by Britain to the tune of $500 million, with Denmark backing the remaining $30 million, the World Bank said in a statement yesterday.
“The toll of destruction, damage, and dislocation in Ukraine is staggering and continues to grow,” Anna Bjerde, the bank’s regional vice president for Europe and Central Asia, said in the statement.
“The Ukrainian people have a long road to recovery ahead and development partners will need to continue to pull together to support Ukraine’s reconstruction.”
Bjerde added that World Bank estimates put the cost of reconstruction and recovery for Ukraine at $100 billion over the next three years, “a figure that is expected to grow as the war continues.”
The bank said it had already mobilised almost $13 billion in emergency funding for Ukraine, $11 billion of which had already been disbursed.
Additional reporting from AFP
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