Ukraine president says 'outnumbered' in strategic city Severodonetsk
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Monday that his troops were outnumbered by a "stronger" Russian side, as the two countries' forces battled for control of the eastern city of Severodonetsk.
"We're holding out" in the key city, but "there are more of them and they are stronger," Zelensky told journalists in Kyiv, one day after a daring visit to frontline positions in Lysychansk, which sits across the Siverskyi Donets river from Severodonetsk.
Moscow, meanwhile, lashed out over European countries denying overflight rights to the aircraft of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Russia expanded its list of American officials banned from entering the country, while Washington placed a seizure order on two aircraft owned by billionaire oligarch Roman Abramovich, raising the stakes for business people in Russian President Vladimir Putin's circle.
Zelensky, along with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, also warned Monday of tightening supplies of grain on the global market due to what Blinken said was a Russian strategy of "blackmail".
"There is somewhere around 20 million tonnes of wheat that is trapped in silos near Odessa, and in ships literally filled with grain that are stuck in the Odessa port because of this Russian blockade," said Blinken.
Heavy shelling
Rhetoric has spiked on both sides of the war, now in its fourth month, as Britain followed the United States in announcing it would supply longer-range, mobile missile launchers to Ukraine's forces, which could improve Kyiv's fight against Russian firepower.
The British Defense Ministry said it would be supplying track-mounted M270 multiple rocket artillery units, which can strike targets up to 80 kilometres (50 miles) away with precision-guided rockets, double what more standard battlefield artillery can reach.
The announcement came after Putin had warned that Moscow will hit new targets in Ukraine if the West supplies Kyiv with such weapons -- but did not specify which targets.
Fighting and heavy artillery strikes remained focused on the Donbas front and especially in Severodonetsk, the largest city of the Lugansk Oblast still not under Russian control.
In Lysychansk, pensioner Oleksandr Lyakhovets said he had just enough time to save his cat before flames engulfed his flat after it was hit by a Russian missile.
"They shoot here endlessly... It's a horror show," the 67-year-old told AFP.
Russian forces pressed their offensive on several other fronts in the east of Ukraine, with Kyiv saying it had repulsed seven attacks around Donetsk and Lugansk.
The Russian defence ministry said its aircraft had hit three arms depots and a fuel storage facility near the village of Kodema, in the Donetsk region.
Both sides have gained and lost ground in recent days in Severodonetsk. Analysts say Ukrainian forces, in holding key areas of the city while attacking on other parts of the front lines, have highlighted weaknesses in Russia's capacity to push forward.
"The ability of Ukrainian forces to successfully counterattack in Severodonetsk, the Kremlin's current priority area of operations, further indicates the declining combat power of Russian forces in Ukraine," said the US-based Institute for the Study of War.
Grain 'blackmail'
On Monday, Lavrov hit out at European countries that prevented his plane passing through their airspace, forcing him to cancel a visit to ally Belgrade.
Serbian daily Vecernje Novosti reported that NATO-members Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Montenegro had refused access to their airspace.
"The unthinkable has happened... This was a deprivation of a sovereign state of the right to carry out foreign policy," Lavrov told journalists in Moscow.
Global concern over food supplies mounted as the Russian blockade on the port city of Odessa continued.
"Right now we have about 20 to 25 million tonnes blocked. In the autumn that could be 70 to 75 million tonnes," said Zelensky, whose country was the world's fourth biggest grain exporter before the war.
In Washington, Blinken said Russia had exacerbated the grain crisis by "hoarding" its own grain, preventing it from being exported.
At the same time, Blinken called "credible" reports that Russia was exporting grain stolen from Ukraine.
"Quite simply put, it's blackmail," Blinken said. — with Quentin Tyberghien in Donbas
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday secured Turkey's crucial backing for Ukraine's NATO aspirations after winning a US pledge for cluster munitions that could inflict massive damage on Russian forces on the battlefield.
Washington's decision to deliver the controversial weapons — banned across a large part of the world but not in Russia or Ukraine — dramatically ups the stakes in the war, which entered its 500th day Saturday.
Zelensky has been travelling across Europe trying to secure bigger and better weapons for his outmatched army, which has launched a long-awaited counteroffensive that is progressing less swiftly than Ukraine's allies had hoped. — AFP
Washington's decision to supply Ukraine with ATACMS long-range missiles is "a grave mistake", Russian ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov says Wednesday.
"The White House's decision to send long-range missiles to Ukrainians is a grave mistake. The consequences of this step, which was deliberately hidden from the public, will be of the most serious nature," he says in a statement. — AFP
President Vladimir Putin says Sunday that Russian forces had made gains in their Ukraine offensive including in Avdiivka, a symbolic industrial hub.
"Our troops are improving their position in almost all of this area, which is quite vast," he says in an interview on Russian television, an extract of which was posted on social media on Sunday. "This concerns the areas of Kupiansk, Zaporizhia and Avdiivka." — AFP
The regional governor says debris from a drone destroyed over the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, fell on homes and killed three people, including a young child.
The air defense system "shot down an aircraft-type UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) approaching the city", says Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, adding that the falling debris destroyed several homes.
"Most importantly, three people were killed, one of them a small child," he writes on the Telegram messaging app, accompanied by pictures of a house reduced to a pile of rubble behind red and white police tape. — AFP
Ukraine's air force says on Tuesday that it had destroyed 27 of 36 Russian attack drones overnight in the south of the country.
Ukrainian forces downed 27 "Shahed-136/131" drones in the southern Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, the air force said on the messaging platform Telegram.
In all, Moscow had launched 36 of the Iranian-made drones from the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014, it says. — AFP
The Kremlin claims on Friday Russian forces never targeted civilian infrastructure after Ukraine blamed Moscow for a missile attack that killed over 50 people in the eastern village of Groza.
"We repeat that the Russian military does not strike civilian targets. Strikes are carried out on military targets, on places where military personnel are concentrated," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says in his daily briefing. — AFP
- Latest
- Trending
