Ukraine claims victories in Severodonetsk as street fighting continues
Ukrainian forces inched their way closer on Thursday to the center of Severodonetsk, the latest turn in an increasingly bloody struggle for the last unoccupied city in the northern Donbas state of Luhansk.
Ukrainian national guard commander Petro Kusyk measured the troop movement building by building.
“Yesterday was successful for us — we launched a counteroffensive and in some areas we managed to push [the Russians] back one or two blocks. In others they pushed us back, but just by a building or two,” he said in an interview on Ukrainian TV.
“Yesterday the occupiers suffered serious losses — if every day were like yesterday, this would all be over soon.”
The reported rally comes less than a day after reports that Ukrainian forces had been pushed to an industrial area on the outskirts of the town, and were considering a retreat across the Siverskyi Donets River to the higher ground of Lysychansk.
Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk confirmed on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had since taken back nearby residential neighborhoods.
Stryuk also warned that the humanitarian situation for the 10,000 to 15,000 civilians still in the city was “almost critical,” as much of the city was in ruins.
Kusyk, the national guard commander, said his troops would hold, but called their lack of long-range artillery “catastrophic,” keeping them from responding to Russian bombardment.
The Russian shelling of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk has reportedly been near-constant.
The US and UK have both said they will supply Ukraine with long-distance rocket systems.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense also reported victories to the south in the Kherson oblast.
Ukrainian authorities gave few details, but claimed Russian forces had “suffered losses in manpower and equipment.”
The city of Kherson was the first to fall to Russian forces moving north from occupied Crimea in the early days of the war. The Kremlin-installed puppet government has said it intends to run the region as a Russian state.
With Post wires
