Ukraine said it suffered “massive bombings” on Saturday from neighboring Belarus, a best friend of Russia, the official best friend involved in the conflict, a day after the announcement of a withdrawal from the strategic city of Severodonetsk.
Twenty rockets fired at the village of Desna in the northern Chernigiv region, the northern Ukrainian army command said in a statement, adding that infrastructure had been hit but no casualties had yet been reported.
Belarus has provided logistics to Moscow since the February 24 invasion, especially in the first few weeks, and since Russia has been subject to Western sanctions, it is officially not involved in the conflict.
“Today’s attack is similar to the Kremlin’s efforts to drag Belarus as a co-belligerent in the war in Ukraine,” the Ukrainian intelligence service said.
The moves preceded a scheduled meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart and best friend Alexander Lukashenko in St. Petersburg on Saturday.
A plume of smoke rises from burning fuel tanks that citizens say were hit by five rockets at Vasylkiv airbase, following russia’s invasion of Ukraine, outside Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 12, 2022. Photo: Reuters/THOMAS PETER
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Friday condemned Brussels’ resolution to award Ukraine as the official EU candidate as a measure to “contain Russia” geopolitically.
The resolution “confirms that a geopolitical monopolization of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) to involve Russia is actively pursued,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
Ukraine’s Western allies will meet Sunday at a summit of G7 leaders in Germany, where President Volodymyr Zelensky will speak.
US President Joe Biden will attend the G7 and a summit of the NATO military alliance in Madrid next week.
Smoke rises above the Lysychansk open-air oil refinery, one of two key cities towards which Russia is advancing Photo: AFP/Anatolyi Stepanov
In face-to-face talks, Western allies will take stock of the effectiveness of the sanctions imposed so far against Moscow, consider new imaginable aid to Ukraine, and begin resorting to longer-term reconstruction plans.
The European Union on Thursday presented strong aid by granting prestige as a candidate to Ukraine, although the road to the club is long.
Moscow rejected the EU’s as a geopolitical measure to “contain Russia. “
After four months, the fighting is still targeting the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv forces, despite everything, have ceded a key point, the market town of Severodonetsk.
Russia has its offensive in eastern Ukraine after being expelled from the capital, Kyiv Photo: AFP/Anatolyi Stepanov
Sergiy Gaiday, governor of the city’s Luhansk region, said Friday that the army was ordered to withdraw.
“Staying in positions that have been bombed relentlessly for months just doesn’t make sense,” he said on Telegram, adding that 90 percent of the city had been damaged.
Severodonetsk, the scene of weeks of street battles as ukrainians, beaten in arms, established a cursed defense.
Capturing the city and its double on the other side of the river, Lysychansk, would give the Russians of Luhansk and allow them to advance further into the wider Donbass.
But Ukraine’s withdrawal from Severodonetsk will replace the course of the war, said Ivan Klyszcz, a foreign relations researcher at Estonian University of Tartu.
Russia has stepped up its offensive in the northern city of Kharkiv in recent days. Photo: AFP / SERGEY BOBOK
“The overall picture, of a slow war of entrenched positions, has hardly changed. We expect a breakthrough from Russia,” he told AFP.
Separately, Russia said Saturday that its troops killed up to 80 Polish fighters in “precision strikes” at a factory in Konstantinovka “in the Donetsk region. “This statement can be independently verified.
Gaiday said the Russians were now advancing towards Lysychansk, which was facing violent shelling.
The scenario for those who remain in the village is bleak.
Liliya Nesterenko, who was cycling into a friend’s space to feed her pets, said her house had no gas, water or electricity, forcing her and her mother to cook on a campfire.
But the 39-year-old was positive about the city’s defenses: “I in our Ukrainian army, deserve (power) to face. “
Andrei Marochko, a spokesman for the Moscow-backed Luhansk army, said Friday that all villages in the nearby regions of Zolote and Hirske are now under the control of Russian or pro-Russian forces.
In a video broadcast on Marochko’s Telegram channel, a guy in army uniform can be seen replacing a Ukrainian flag with a Zolote coat of arms with a red flag with a hammer and sickle.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday that up to another 2,000 people were “totally stranded” near Zolote and Hirske, and that part of Zolote was under Russian control.
Russia has also stepped up its offensive in the northern city of Kharkiv in recent days.
An AFP team on Saturday saw a 10-story administrative construction in the city center pierced by missiles overnight, causing a fire but with no casualties.
It had already been bombed, prompting a soldier on the spot to point out: “The Russians are completing what they started.
On Friday, the same hounds found a stray dog eating human remains in the town of Chugiv, southeast of Kharkiv, where an attack this week left six other people dead.
In the southern Kherson region, an official appointed through Moscow was killed through an explosive device placed in his car, Russian news agencies reported.
It was the first to show the death of a pro-Russian official in a series of attacks on pro-Kremlin officials in Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine.