After weeks of fierce fighting, Ukrainian forces will withdraw from a besieged city in the east of the country to avoid the siege, a regional governor said on Friday.
The city of Severodonetsk, the administrative center of the Lugansk region, has faced relentless Russian bombing. Ukrainian troops fought the Russians in house-to-house battles before retreating to a huge chemical factory on the outskirts of the city, where they hid in their underground structures.
In recent days, Russian forces have made gains around Severodonetsk and the neighboring city of Lysychansk, on a steep bank across the river, in an attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces.
Some Ukrainian forces remained locked up with about 500 civilians at the Azot chemical plant, the only part of the city that was still under Ukrainian control.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said Ukrainian troops have been ordered to leave Severodonetsk to avoid further casualties.
“We’re going to have to withdraw our guys,” he said. “It makes no sense to stay in the destroyed positions, because the number of casualties in poorly fortified areas will increase every day.”
Haidai said Ukrainian forces “have been ordered to withdraw to new positions and continue fighting there,” but did not give further details.
A photograph taken on June 21 from the town of Lysychansk, shows a large column of smoke rising on the horizon, behind the city of Severodonetsk, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian troops have been ordered to leave Severodonetsk, says a regional governor. (Anatolii Stepanov / AFP / Getty Images)
He said the Russians were also advancing on Lysychansk from Zolote and Toshkivka, adding that Russian reconnaissance units raided the city limits but were driven out by their defenders.
The governor added that a bridge on a road leading to Lysychansk was badly damaged in a Russian air strike and rendered unusable for trucks. The claim could not be independently verified.
Russia dominates much of 2 provinces
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday that four Ukrainian battalions and a unit of “foreign mercenaries” with a total of about 2,000 soldiers have been “totally blocked” near Hirske and Zolote, south of Lysychansk.
After a failed attempt to capture Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, in the initial stage of the invasion that began on February 24, Russian forces have shifted their attention to the Donbas region, where forces Ukrainians have been fighting Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.
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The Russian army controls about 95 percent of Luhansk province and about half of the neighboring Donetsk province, the two areas that make up the Donbas.
After repeated requests to its Western allies for heavier weapons to counter Russia’s lead in firepower, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said a response had come in the form of a rocket launcher. medium-sized Americans.
At another event, a pro-Moscow administration official in the southern city of Kherson who was captured by Russian troops early in the invasion died Friday in an explosion.
The pro-Russian regional administration in Kherson said Dmitry Savlyuchenko died when his vehicle exploded in what he described as a “terrorist attack.”
There were no immediate claims of liability.
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A Ukrainian emergency team removed an unexploded 500-kilo bomb that landed in a residential building in Kharkiv on March 19. Weeks of bombing made it impossible to remove the deactivated ammunition before.
More US military aid on the way
Gathering at a summit in Brussels, the leaders of the 27 nations of the European Union on Thursday gathered the unanimous approval needed to grant candidate status to Ukraine. This sets in motion an accession process that can take years or even decades.
European officials have said Ukraine has already adopted around 70 per cent of EU rules and standards, but have also pointed to the need for other far-reaching measures.
The Ukrainian MP says his country is “ready to fight and die for European values”:
Ukraine granted the EU candidacy
In a political victory for Ukraine and a possible blow to Vladimir Putin, the European Union granted Ukraine candidate status, putting it on the path to joining the EU in the coming years.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted his gratitude and declared: “Ukraine’s future lies within the EU.”
“It’s a victory. We’ve been waiting for 120 days and 30 years,” he said on Instagram, referring to the length of the war and the decades since Ukraine became independent after the break-up of the Soviet Union. “And now we will defeat the enemy.”
Ukraine applied to become a member less than a week after Moscow invaded on February 24th.
In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin opposed Ukraine’s plans to sign an association agreement with the EU and pressured the Ukrainian president at the time to withdraw at the last minute.
As the European bloc met, U.S. officials announced Thursday that they would send an additional $ 450 million in military aid to Ukraine, including four more of the medium-range rocket systems, ammunition and other supplies.
The food crisis “could be even worse” in 2023, according to the UN chief
Germany hosted a global food security summit on Friday. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a rally in Berlin that the war in Ukraine has added to the disruptions caused by climate change, the coronavirus pandemic and inequality to produce a “crisis of global hunger without precedents “that already affects hundreds of millions of people.
“There is a real risk that multiple famines will be declared in 2022,” he said in a video message to officials from dozens of rich and developing countries gathered in Berlin. “And 2023 could be even worse.”
Guterres noted that crops in Asia, Africa and America will have an impact as farmers around the world struggle to cope with rising fertilizer and energy prices.
“This year’s food access issues could turn into next year’s global food shortage,” he said. “No country will be immune to the social and economic repercussions of a catastrophe like this.”
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blamed Russia for the global food crisis and urged his fellow Commonwealth leaders to move away from Moscow. But their calls met with resistance, as several countries met with Russia, China and Brazil.
Guterres said UN negotiators were working on an agreement that would allow Ukraine to export food, even across the Black Sea, and for Russia to bring food and fertilizer to world markets without restrictions.
The host of the Berlin meeting, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, said Moscow’s assertion that Western sanctions imposed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were to blame for the shortage of food was “completely unsustainable.”
Russia exported both wheat in May and June this year as well as in the same months of 2021, Baerbock said.
The Russian finds a home for his wheat in several countries, including many in Africa and the Middle East.