Sievierodonetsk’s civilians told to stay in cellars as Russian forces advance

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Russian forces have taken about half of Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine, its mayor has said, as heavy fighting continued in and around the key city and civilians were told to stay underground.

Oleksandr Striuk said artillery bombardments were threatening the lives of the thousands of civilians still sheltering in the ruined city, with evacuations not possible.

“Half of the city has been captured by the Russians and fierce street fighting is under way,” Striuk said. “The situation is very serious and the city is essentially being destroyed ruthlessly block by block.

“The Ukrainian military continues to resist this frenzied push and aggression by Russian forces. Unfortunately … the city has been split in half. But at the same time the city still defends itself. It is still Ukrainian,” he said, advising those still trapped inside to stay in cellars.

Striuk estimated that about 13,000 people remained in the city out of a prewar population of about 100,000 but said it was impossible to keep track of civilian casualties amid round-the-clock shelling.

He said more than 1,500 people in the city who died of various causes have been buried since the war began in February. “Civilians are dying from direct strikes, from fragmentation wounds and under the rubble of destroyed buildings, since most of the inhabitants are hiding in basements and shelters,” he said.

The leader of the pro-Moscow self-proclaimed republic of Luhansk earlier admitted that Russian and pro-Moscow forces were moving more slowly than they hoped. “We can say already that a third of Sievierodonetsk is already under our control,” Russia’s Tass state news agency quoted Leonid Pasechnik as saying.

Amid mounting concern for the civilians still trapped in the city Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council aid agency, which had long operated out of Sievierodonetsk, said he was “horrified” by its destruction.

“We fear that up to 12,000 civilians remain caught in crossfire in the city, without sufficient access to water, food, medicine or electricity. The near-constant bombardment is forcing civilians to seek refuge in bomb shelters and basements, with only few precious opportunities for those trying to escape.”

Elsewhere on the battlefield, there were few reports of major action on Tuesday.

In the east, Ukraine says Moscow is trying to assault other areas along the main front, including pressing towards the city of Sloviansk.

In the south, Ukraine claimed in recent days to have pushed back Russian forces on a bank of the Inhulets River that forms a border of Russian-held Kherson province.

After having failed to capture Kyiv, been driven out of northern Ukraine and made only limited progress elsewhere in the east, Moscow has concentrated the full force of its armed might in recent days on Sievierodonetsk.

Victory there and in adjoining Lysychansk would let Moscow claim control of Luhansk province, one of two eastern regions it claims on behalf of separatist proxies, partly achieving one of President Vladimir Putin’s stated war aims.

But the huge battle has come at a massive cost, which some western military experts say could hurt Russia’s ability to fend off eventual Ukrainian counterattacks elsewhere, regardless of who wins the battle for Sievierodonetsk.

“Putin is now hurling men and munitions at the last remaining major population centre in [Luhansk], Sievierodonetsk, as if taking it would win the war for the Kremlin. He is wrong,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War thinktank wrote this week.

“When the Battle of Sievierodonetsk ends, regardless of which side holds the city, the Russian offensive at the operational and strategic levels will likely have culminated, giving Ukraine the chance to restart its operational-level counteroffensives to push Russian forces back.”

The latest fighting came as Russia said on Tuesday that it will hand over the bodies of 152 Ukrainian soldiers found underneath the Azovstal steel plant in the port city of Mariupol, now under Moscow’s control.

Russia’s defence ministry said its troops found “152 bodies of dead militants and servicemen of Ukraine’s armed forces” that it claims were stored inside a cooling unit and that “four mines” were found underneath the bodies.

“The Russian side plans to hand over the bodies of Ukrainian militants and servicemen found on the territory of the Azovstal plant to representatives in Ukraine,” the ministry added.

News agencies contributed to this report