https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/01/world/russia-ukraine-war-news/russian-troops-storm-sievierodonetsk-the-last-major-city-standing-in-the-luhansk-region?smid=url-share
Russian troops have stormed the city of Sievierodonetsk from three directions and converged in the city center, according to a local military official, appearing to close in on seizing the last main pocket of Ukrainian control in the eastern region of Luhansk.
The industrial town has been the focus of Russia’s offensive in recent days in its effort to grasp control of the Donbas region, which is made up of Luhansk and Donetsk. Russian forces have reached the city’s core, Serhiy Haidai, the Ukrainian head of the regional military administration, wrote on Telegram early Wednesday.
Mr. Haidai had said Tuesday evening that most of the city, a railway hub with a prewar population of about 100,000, was under Russian control.
Russia’s concentration of its efforts on Sievierodonetsk has made it vulnerable to Ukrainian counterattacks elsewhere, including in the strategically important port city of Kherson on the Black Sea, according to analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research body. Kherson was the first major Ukrainian city to fall to Russian hands in the war.
Capturing Sievierodonetsk would bring Russia one step closer to its stated aim in the current phase of the war — seizing Ukraine’s east, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting since 2014. It also clears the path for Russian troops to advance westward toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in neighboring Donetsk, the last major Ukrainian-held cities in region.
In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called the state of the battle in the Donbas region “very difficult” but emphasized that his troops were having success near Kherson, and also around Zaporizhzhia in the south and Kharkiv in the northeast.
“The frontline situation must be assessed comprehensively,” he said. “Not by one area, where there is the most tough situation and which attracts the most attention, but by the whole front line.”
