Vladimir Putin’s offensive in Ukraine is being slowed by Ukrainian forces blowing up bridges as they withdraw forcing his troops to undertake dangerous river crossing, British defence chiefs said on Monday.
They believe that the Russian president’s army will have to improve its ability to capture river banks in order to achieve his aim of seizing this region of eastern Ukraine.
In its latest intelligence update, the Ministry of Defence in London said as Russian forces seek to advance on several fronts: “Ukrainian forces have often managed to demolish bridges before they withdraw, while Russia has struggled to put in place the complex coordination necessary to conduct successful, large scale river crossings under fire.”
It added: “The key, 90km (56 miles) long central sector of Russia’s frontline in the Donbas lies to the west of the Siverskyy Donets River.
“To achieve success in the current operational phase of its Donbas offensive, Russia is either going to have to complete ambitious flanking actions, or conduct assault river crossings.”
However, Mr Putin’s troops are believed to need to blow up just one more bridge to significantly cut off the industrial city of Severodonetsk in the Luhansk province of the Donbas.
Fierce street by street fighting has been taking place in the city, with both sides reported to be suffering heavy losses.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said his forces were fighting for “every metre” of Severodonetsk after Russian troops destroyed a bridge to another city across the river, leaving stranded civilians with just one way out.
Russian forces have taken most of Severodonetsk, having pulverized parts of the city in one of the bloodiest assaults since they invaded Ukraine on February 24, and victory there could give them momentum in a wider battle for control over the Donbas.
“The key tactical goal of the occupiers has not changed: they are pressing in Severodonetsk, severe fighting is ongoing there - literally for every metre,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Sunday, adding that Russia’s military was trying to pour reserves into the Donbas.
He claimed that the image of a 12-year-old wounded in a Russian strike was now the enduring worldwide face of Mr Putin’s invasion.
“These very facts will underscore the way in which Russia is seen by the world,” he said.
“Not Peter the Great, not Lev Tolstoy, but children injured and killed in Russian attacks,” he said, in an apparent reference to Mr Putin’s remarks last week comparing Moscow’s military campaign to Russian emperor Peter the Great’s 18th century conquest of lands held by Sweden.
Ukrainian and Russian forces were still fighting street-by-street in Severodonetsk on Sunday, the governor of Luhansk province, Serhiy Gaidai, said.
Russian forces have taken most of the city but Ukrainian troops remain in control of an industrial area and the Azot chemical plant where hundreds of civilians are sheltering.
“About 500 civilians remain on the grounds of the Azot plant in Severodonetsk, 40 of them are children. Sometimes the military manages to evacuate someone,” Mr Gaidai said.
But the Russians had destroyed a bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River linking Severodonetsk with its twin city of Lysychansk, he added.
That left just one of three bridges still standing.
“If after new shelling the bridge collapses, the city will truly be cut off. There will be no way of leaving Severodonetsk in a vehicle,” Mr Gaidai said, noting the lack of a cease-fire agreement and no agreed evacuation corridors.
The governor said Lysychansk was also being shelled by Russian forces, and a six-year-old child had been killed there.
In Pokrovsk, southwest of Severodonetsk, women, children and elderly, some in wheelchairs, boarded the only train evacuating people on Saturday, at the start of a long journey from the conflict zone to safety in Lviv near the border with Poland.
“We held on until the last moment, we didn’t want to leave, but life has forced us to survive,” Lyuba, a woman from Lysychansk, told Reuters Television as she waited for the train to depart. “We are leaving, we don’t know where, to whom, but we are leaving.”
The fall of Severodonetsk, in the last pocket of Ukrainian land held in the strategic Luhansk region, would move Russia a step closer to one of the stated goals of what Putin calls a “special military operation.”
Russian forces were firing mortars and artillery south and southwest of Severodonetsk, according to Ukraine’s general staff. But it said Ukrainian forces had repulsed Russian attempts to advance towards some communities.
After being forced to scale back its initial goals following its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has turned its attention to expanding control in the Donbas, where pro-Russian separatists have held territory since 2014.
Russian forces have engaged in the constant bombardment of cities in the south and east, leaving many in ruins and thousands of civilians dead, according to the United Nations.
Elsewhere, Russian cruise missiles destroyed a large depot containing US and European weapons in western Ukraine’s Ternopil region, Russia’s Interfax agency reported.
Ternopil’s governor said rockets fired from the Black Sea at the city of Chortkiv had partly destroyed a military facility and injured 22 people. A local official said there were no weapons stored there.
On Sunday, the Ukrainian general staff said on Facebook that General Valeriy Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, had spoken to General Mark Milley, the top US military officer, and reiterated a request for more heavy artillery systems.
Moscow has criticised the United States and other nations for sending Ukraine weapons, threatening to strike new targets if the West supplied long-range missiles.
