Russia’s advance into the city of Severodonetsk has forced another Ukraine retreat into the Donbass region, the Russian-speaking east that President Vladimir Putin has vowed to conquer. The information was confirmed by the regional government this Friday (24), four months since the beginning of the military invasion.
Governor Serhii Haidai said troops had already been ordered to abandon their positions. “Staying in destroyed positions for many months just to say we are there makes no sense; there will have to be a retreat,” he told local TV.
The Ukrainian retreat is yet another victory for Moscow not only for conquering the territory, but also because it represents the downfall of one of the last pockets of resistance in Lugansk province. In the city of Lisitchansk, separated from Severodonetsk by the Donets River, Kiev troops remain in position, but accumulate successive defeats.
The most recent came on Friday, when Russian forces fully occupied the city of Hirske, south of Lisitchansk, making the region surrounded on three sides. “There are some minor local battles going on in the surroundings, but the enemy has entered,” municipal chief Oleksi Babtchenko reported in a video.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have surrounded approximately 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers, including 80 fighters from other countries – called mercenaries by the Russians – in Hirske. The information could not be independently confirmed, but it echoes the claims of the small town’s own administration.
Local authorities already predicted the intensification of Russian attacks. Serhii Haidai, just this week, had said that Moscow planned to control Lugansk until this Sunday (26). And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was prepared for the likely increase in bombing after Ukraine was formally accepted as a candidate for the European Union (EU).
Alongside Donetsk, the province of Lugansk makes up the Donbass, an area of ​​strong Russian influence, east of Ukraine’s territory, where there are also two self-proclaimed separatist republics that the Putin government recognized days before starting the military invasion. Moscow said, after suffering the first defeats in the war, that it would concentrate its forces in the region.
The Council of the EU accepted the candidacies of Ukraine and Moldova on Thursday (23). The accession process should take years, or even decades, since deep reforms are needed in the applying states, but the news was a blow to the Russians, as it endorses the movement of rapprochement of former Soviet republics with the West.
Commenting on the matter, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said the decision was merely an “internal European matter”. He was more critical, however, when commenting on the situation in Moldova, where Transnistria is located, a 400km strip along the border with Ukraine that formally belongs to the country but has been dominated by pro-Russian separatists since 1992.
Peskov said the former Soviet republic wanted to be “more European than the Europeans themselves”. “It seems to them that the more anti-Russian they are, the more Europeans will want them,” he added.
