Russian forces capture Lyman in Ukraine’s Donetsk region

Russia on Saturday said it was in full control of the Ukrainian town of Lyman, a railway hub in the Donetsk region. This would help set the stage for the next phase of the Kremlin’s offensive in the eastern Donbas, reports Reuters.

Lyman is a railway junction and also the gateway to rail and road bridges over the Siverskyy Donets River.

Ukrainian and Russian forces had been fighting for Lyman for several days. The governor of Luhansk region, which along with Donetsk makes up the Donbas, said on Friday that Russian troops had entered Sievierodonetsk, the largest Donbas city still held by Ukraine.

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A British defence ministry briefing said a bridgehead near Lyman would give Russia an advantage in the potential next phase of the Donbas offensive. Russian forces were likely to attempt to cross the river in the coming days, it said.

Shift in momentum

The Russian gains indicate a shift in momentum in the war. The Russian forces are making slow but steady advances in the Donbas, large parts of which were already controlled by Moscow-backed separatists before the war.

The tactics involve mass artillery bombardments and air strikes that have laid waste to towns and cities, says the report.

“If Russia did succeed in taking over these areas, it would highly likely be seen by the Kremlin as a substantive political achievement and be portrayed to the Russian people as justifying the invasion,” the British defence ministry said in its daily intelligence report on Saturday.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said on Saturday Ukrainian forces had repelled eight assaults in Donetsk and Luhansk in the previous 24 hours. Russia’s attacks included artillery assaults in the Sievierodonetsk area “with no success”, it said.

The Luhansk governor, Serhiy Gaidai, said on Friday that Ukrainian forces may have to retreat from Sievierodonetsk — which lies on the eastern side of the river — to avoid capture after Russian troops entered it.

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Zelenskyy defiant

Meanwhile, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy remained defiant in his nightly address to Ukrainians. “If the occupiers think that Lyman and Sievierodonetsk will be theirs, they are wrong. Donbas will be Ukrainian,” he said.

Thousands of people, including many civilians, have been killed and several million have fled their homes in the war. Russian destruction of whole urban areas has drawn widespread international condemnation, although Moscow denies targeting civilians.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has not been deterred by a broad range of Western sanctions on Russia, nor by earlier battlefield setbacks.

Russia’s eastern gains follow the withdrawal of its forces from approaches to Kyiv, and a Ukrainian counter-offensive that pushed its forces back from Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv.

In the south, where Moscow has seized a swath of territory since the invasion, including the port of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials say Russia aims to impose permanent rule, Reuters report says.

On the diplomatic front, European Union officials said a deal might be reached by Sunday to ban deliveries of Russian oil by sea, accounting for about 75 per cent of the bloc’s supply, but not by pipeline. Zelenskiy has criticised the EU for delaying such a ban.

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