Fighting around the city of Sievierodonetsk has intensified, with at least 1,500 casualties and 60% of residential buildings destroyed. About 12 …
Fighting around the city of Sievierodonetsk has intensified, with at least 1,500 casualties and 60% of residential buildings destroyed. About 12,000 to 13,000 people remain in the city, according to the local mayor, with Sievierodonetsk the only part of the Luhansk region in Donbas still under Ukrainian government control.
Elsewhere, two Russian soldiers accused of war crimes have appeared at a second trial hearing in the northeastern town of Kotelva, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded with the West on Thursday to send multiple launch rocket systems to Ukraine as soon as possible.
Follow developments on Friday as they unfolded in our blog below:
Two Russians accused of war crimes appear in Ukrainian court
Two Russian soldiers accused of war crimes in Ukraine appeared at a second trial hearing in the northeastern town of Kotelva.
The Russian servicemen, Alexander Alexeevich Ivanov and Alexander Vladimirovich Bobykin, are charged with shelling civilian infrastructure with a multiple rocket launcher. Both soldiers pleaded guilty at the hearing held at the Kotelevsky District Court.
If convicted, the servicemen could face up to 12 years in prison.
Their defence attorney asked for eight years, saying the two were only following their officers’ orders.
Asked if they wanted to make any declarations at the end of the hearing, Bobykin said: “I admit what I did, I regret the actions our troops committed, I believe that in the future the war will end and the peace we are all waiting for will come.”
Ivanov made no comment.
The trial is adjourned to 31 May.
(AP)
At least 1,500 dead in city of Sievierodonetsk, says mayor
The Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk is the centre of fierce fighting in the east. Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk says it’s holding out even though a Russian reconnaissance and sabotage group went into a city hotel.
Stryuk said at least 1,500 people have been killed in Sievierodonetsk and about 12,000 to 13,000 remain in the city, where he said 60% of residential buildings have been destroyed.
Sievierodonetsk is the only part of the Luhansk region in the Donbas under Ukrainian government control, and Russian forces have been trying to cut it off from the rest of Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Stryuk said the main road between the neighboring town of Lysychansk and Bakhmut to the southwest remains open, but travel is dangerous.
He said only 12 people were able to be evacuated Thursday.
(AP)
Zelenskyy pleads for more rockets
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded with the West on Thursday to send multiple launch rocket systems to Ukraine as soon as possible to give it a chance against the Russian offensive in the eastern Donbas.
“We are fighting for Ukraine to be provided with all the weapons needed to change the nature of the fighting and start moving faster and more confidently toward the expulsion of the occupiers,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation.
He said Russian forces are wiping some eastern towns from the face of the Earth and the region could end up “uninhabited.”
“They want to turn Popasna, Bakhmut, Lyman, Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk into ashes as they did with Volnovakha and Mariupol,” Zelenskyy said.
In the shelling Thursday of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Zelenskyy said at least nine people were killed and 19 wounded. Among those killed was a five-month-old baby and the infant’s father, with the child’s mother seriously injured.
Zelenskyy also had harsh words for members of the European Union who are resisting imposing even tougher sanctions on Russia including a ban on the import of Russian oil and gas, the major source of revenue for Moscow.
(AP)
