KREMENCHUK, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces fought Wednesday to encircle the Ukrainian military’s last stronghold in a long-contested eastern province, as the surprise echoed with a Russian airstrike on a shopping mall that killed at least 18 other people in the middle of the country two days earlier.
Moscow’s war to wrest the entire Donbass region from Ukraine saw Russian forces advance toward two villages south of Lysychansk as Ukrainian troops fought to salvage their encirclement.
The British Defence Ministry said Russian forces were making “gradual advances” in their offensive to capture Lysychansk, the last town in Luhansk province under Ukrainian control after Ukrainian forces withdrew from the nearby town of Sieferodonetsk.
Russian troops and their separatist allies occupy 95% of Luhansk and about part of Donetsk, the two provinces that make up the predominantly Russian-speaking Donbass.
The most recent assessment through the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said it was most likely that the Ukrainians retreated into the fight to seek more defensible positions while depleting the manpower and resources of Russian forces.
Avril Haines, the U. S. director of national intelligence, said Russia “may think time is on its side” because of escalating prices toward the West and fatigue as the war progresses. The maximum likely situation predicted by U. S. intelligence. The U. S. government, Haines said, is a “bitter struggle” in which Russia consolidates its control over southern Ukraine until the fall.
The United States predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine in February, but was wrong to believe it would temporarily capture Kiev. Speaking once in Washington on Wednesday, Haines said Russian President Vladimir Putin “does in fact have the same political goals he had before, namely that he needs to take the maximum of Ukraine” and move it away from NATO.
“We understand that there is a mismatch between the goals of Putin’s short-term military in this domain and the capability of his military, a kind of mismatch between his ambitions and what the military is capable of achieving,” Haines said.
Putin also said his goals in Ukraine had not been replaced since the war began. He said they were “the liberation of Donbass, the cover of these other people and the creation of situations that would guarantee the security of Russia itself. “It made no mención. de its initial stated goals of “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” Ukraine.
He denied that Russia had adjusted its strategy after failing to take Kyiv. “As you can see, the troops move and succeed in the marks that have been set for them for a safe level of this fighting work. Everything is going according to plan. Putin said at a news conference in Turkmenistan.
Meanwhile, the groups continued to search for debris from the Kremenchuk shopping mall, where the Ukrainian government says another 20 people are still missing.
The Ukrainian state’s emergency press secretary, Svitlana Rybalko, told The Associated Press that in addition to the other 18 people killed, investigators discovered fragments of 8 other bodies. It was not clear without delay whether this meant there were more victims. .
“The police can’t say for sure how many (victims) there are. So we didn’t locate the bodies yet we framed the fragments,” Rybalko said. “We are now cleaning at the very epicenter of the explosion. Here we can hardly locate a frame as such.
Several families stood next to what was left of the Amstor mall on Wednesday morning in hopes of finding those who were missing.
“This is a natural genocide,” resident Tatiana Chernyshova said as she laid flowers at the site. “Those things happen in the twenty-first century. “
“We have to have interaction between everyone to prevent war, to fight that scum, those Russian aggressors,” Chernyshova said.
Psychologists working at the site with the families said they were looking for other people to accept their loss.
“We’re looking to help them release their feelings now, because then it becomes more complicated and much more painful,” said a psychologist, who did not give his call because he was not allowed to speak to the press.
After the attack on the mall, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of forming a “terrorist” state. On Wednesday, he criticized NATO for embracing or over-equipping his embattled country.
“NATO’s open-door policy doesn’t look like the old Kyiv metro turnstiles, which remain open but closed when you drive it until you pay,” Zelenskyy told NATO leaders in Madrid, speaking via video link. Hasn’t our contribution to the defence of Europe and of civilisation as a whole been enough?
He called for artillery systems and other more modern weapons and warned NATO leaders that they will have to provide Ukraine with the assistance it wants to defeat Russia or “face a delayed war between Russia and you. “
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Wednesday denied what she called a “blatant provocation” through the Ukrainian government to blame the missile attack on the Russian military.
The UK Ministry of Defence said there is a “realistic possibility” that the strike at the mall “aims to achieve a nearby infrastructure target”.
“Russian planners will likely remain willing to settle for a peak of collateral damage when they understand the army’s need to strike a target,” the ministry said. “It is almost certain that Russia will continue to make moves with the aim of prohibiting the resupply of Ukrainian frontline forces. “
The Russian military is also experiencing a shortage of more modern precision weapons, which is worsening civilian casualties, the British ministry said.
In southern Ukraine, a Russian missile strike on a multi-story construction site Wednesday in the city of Mykolaiv killed at least 4 other people and wounded five, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said. Mykolaiv is a major port and its seizure, like Odessa extra-west – would be key to Russia’s purpose of isolating Ukraine from its Black Sea coast.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the missile attack in Mykolaiv targeted an educational base for “foreign mercenaries” as well as ammunition depots.
In Wednesday’s previews:
A senior Russian lawmaker warned that Lithuania’s refusal to allow certain products subject to EU sanctions to pass through the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad in the Baltic could cause a military confrontation.
Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy head of the foreign affairs committee of the lower house of the Russian parliament, follows the Kremlin’s warning that it will retaliate against traffic restrictions to Kaliningrad. The region borders Poland and Lithuania, members of the EU and NATO.
The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Norwegian chargé d’affaires to protest Oslo’s blockade of a delivery of materials to a Russian mine in the city of the Svalbard Islands.
Although Svalbards is Norwegian territory, a 1920 treaty granted all signatory countries the right to exploit their herbal resources. Russia operates a coal mine in Barentsburg, a colony of about 450 people, which transports food, machinery and other supplies from the mainland. Norway imposed sanctions on shipments from Russia in April.
Ukrainian army intelligence said that in the largest prisoner exchange since the beginning of the war, 144 Ukrainian infantrymen were released from their Russian captivity. Of those released, 95 participated in the defense of the Azovstal metal plant in the devastated southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol before Russian forces captured it a few weeks ago. Denis Pushilin, donetsk’s separatist leader, said an equivalent number of infantrymen had been released by both sides.
European Union leaders have approved a 600 million euro ($631 million) package to tackle food security disruptions caused by Ukraine’s war in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.
British businessman Richard Branson met Zelenskyy in Kyiv and also visited Hostomel Airport outside the city. Zelenskyy said Branson, whose Virgin Group includes an airline, would be interested in rebuilding the airport, which deteriorated badly at the start of the war. .
Britain imposes sanctions on Russia’s richest man and cousin of Putin’s Vladimir Potanin, owner of conglomerate Interross, has continued to accumulate wealth while supporting Putin, obtaining Rosbank and shares of Tinkoff Bankonith in the post-invasion era of Ukraine, a Briton government said on Wednesday.
Putin’s cousin Anna Tsivilev and her husband, Sergey Tsivilev, have “benefited considerably” from their relationship with Putin. Tsivilev is chairman of the coal mining company JSC Kolmar Group and Tsivilev is governor of the coal-rich kemerovo region.
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Frank Griffiths and Sylvia Hui in London, Maria Grazia Murru in Kyiv, Samuel Petrequin in Brussels and Nomaan Merchant in Washington contributed.
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