On Sunday, Russia announced that it had taken control of the strategic city of Lischansk and the entire Luhansk region, in what would be a decisive breakthrough for Moscow’s forces seeking to control the country’s east.
This comes at a time when Belarus announced it had intercepted rockets fired by Kyiv and Russia reported that Ukraine fired three cluster rockets at Belgorod in an attack that killed four people. Lischansk was the last major city in the Luhansk region of Donbass in eastern Ukraine that remained in Ukrainian hands. Its control is indicative of a major Russian offensive in the Donbas, which Moscow has been focusing on since its withdrawal from Kyiv.
On Saturday, there were conflicting reports about Lischansk’s status: Ukraine denied reports from Moscow that Russian troops had surrounded the entire town, separated by a river from neighboring Severodonetsk, which Russian troops captured last week. The Ukrainian side has not yet commented on information related to the fall of Lischansk after several days of violent clashes.
“Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Sergei Shoigu informed Vladimir Putin about the liberation of the Luhansk People’s Republic,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement circulated by local news agencies. A few minutes before the announcement, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry said fighting was underway in Lysechansk and Ukrainian forces were “completely” surrounded.
Russian city targeting
The Russian announcement came when Moscow said its air defenses shot down three Tochka-U cluster missiles fired by “Ukrainian nationalists” at Belgorod, a Russian city close to the Ukrainian border. The governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said that 11 apartment buildings and 39 residential buildings were damaged as a result of the shelling.
Earlier, Moscow accused Kyiv of delivering strikes on Russian territory, in particular, in the Belgorod region. In turn, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko accused Kyiv of “provoking” his country and said that his army had intercepted rockets fired by Ukrainian troops at Belarus “about three days ago.”
Belarus is one of the most important allies of Russia and supported the invasion that began on February 24, while Kyiv accused it of delivering strikes on the territory of Ukraine. But Lukashenko has denied any role for his country in the border incident. “I repeat to you, as I said over a year ago, we are not going to fight in Ukraine,” he was quoted as saying on Saturday by the official Belta news agency.
“Struggle”
Meanwhile, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russian bombardments continued in Ukraine amid heavy fighting. “Fierce fighting continues along the front line in Donbass,” Zelenskiy said in a speech on Saturday, adding that “the enemy is stepping up its activity in the Kharkiv region.”
A resident of the small Donetsk town of Seversk told AFP that “shelling continues day and night.” Local authorities in Donetsk said two people were killed and three wounded, including two children, as a result of the strike on the town of Dopropyl.
Rockets also hit houses in Slovyansk, in the center of Donbass, killing a woman in her garden and injuring her husband, a neighbor told AFP on Saturday, referring to shrapnel scattered around the area. An eyewitness said Friday’s strike is believed to have been caused by cluster munitions that spread over a wide area before detonating and hitting buildings and people outside. And Zelenskiy warned against complacency in cities that have not experienced the violence of other cities. “The war is not over yet,” he said. “Unfortunately, in some places it is getting more and more violent, and we cannot forget it.”
The need for a “huge investment”
In his speech, Zelensky also mentioned a conference on the restoration of Ukraine, which is due to begin on Monday in Switzerland. Leaders of dozens of countries and international organizations will meet in Lugano to draw up a roadmap to rebuild the war-torn country.
Zelensky said Ukraine’s recovery “needs huge investments – billions, new technologies, new institutions and, of course, reforms.” He noted that the war affected ten regions of Ukraine, and many cities and villages had to be “rebuilt” from scratch. The roadmap is expected to identify recovery needs, including destroyed and damaged infrastructure, Ukraine’s crumbling economy, and environmental and social needs. The cost is estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars. Ukraine will also face calls for broad reforms, especially in regards to fighting corruption. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed the need for reform and said desired EU membership was “within reach” for Ukraine, but urged Kyiv to take action to fight corruption. Before the war, Ukraine was a major exporter of agricultural products, but the Russian invasion wreaked havoc on farmland, during which Moscow seized, cleared or blockaded Ukrainian ports, raising fears of food shortages, especially in poor countries. Farmer Sergei Lyubarsky, who owns fields close to the front lines, has warned that time is running out for this year’s harvest. “We can wait until August 10 at the latest, but after that the grains will dry out and fall to the ground,” he said. Western powers have accused Putin of using the dead crop as a weapon to increase pressure on the international community, and Russia has been accused of stealing grain.