bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Agencies

Ukraine’s president has made an impassioned plea to Western allies to speed arms deliveries and help stem “terrifying” casualties as Russian forces lay siege to the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk, destroying the last bridges into the industrial hub.
The cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk have been targeted for weeks as the last areas in the eastern Donbas region of Lugansk still under Ukrainian control.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the human cost of the battle for the region was “simply terrifying”.
Zelensky expressed confidence in Ukraine’s ability to reclaim territory, calling on the nation’s allies to send more weapons.
“We just need enough weapons to ensure all of this. Our partners have them,” he said late on Monday.
Presidential adviser Mikhaylo Podolyak listed items he said the Ukrainian army requires, including hundreds of howitzers, tanks and armoured vehicles.
Gruesome scenes and anguish in Ukraine frontline city
“Being straightforward - to end the war we need heavy weapons,” he tweeted.
Moscow has criticised the United States and other nations for sending Ukraine weapons and has threatened to strike new targets if the West supplied long-range missiles.
On Monday, regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said that Ukraine’s forces had been pushed back from Sievierodonetsk’s centre after a weeks-long Russian offensive.
“They destroyed all the bridges, and getting into the city is no longer possible. Evacuation is also not possible,” he told Radio Free Europe.
He said Russian forces control 70 to 80 per cent of the city but had not captured or encircled it.
The Azot chemical plant in Sievierodonetsk is also being pummelled by Russian forces. According to Gaiday, some 500 civilians, including 40 children, continue to hold out in the plant, using it as an air raid shelter.

He said it was “difficult” to support them but that there are “some reserves” in the plant.
On Tuesday, Gaiday said that Russian forces were firing at the plant and that Moscow’s forces in the city had been reinforced by “two tactical battalion groups”.
The situation Sievierodonetsk risked becoming like Mariupol, “with a large pocket of Ukrainian defenders cut off from the rest of the Ukrainian troops”, according to Damien Magrou, spokesperson for the International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine that has had forces in Sievierodonetsk.
During the fall of Mariupol last month, hundreds of civilians and badly wounded Ukrainian soldiers were trapped for weeks in the Azovstal steelworks.
Ukraine exhumes bodies with ‘knees shot, hands tied’ from forest graves
Russia has denied targeting civilians in what it calls a “special operation” to restore Russian security and “denazify” its neighbour.
After Mariupol, Russia then turned greater attention toward taking control of Luhansk province. Russia now controls 90 per cent of Luhansk and has been making incremental gains to completely encircle Sievierodonetsk.
The capture of Sievierodonetsk would open the road to Sloviansk and another major city, Kramatorsk, in Moscow’s push to conquer Donbas, a mainly Russian-speaking region partly held by pro-Kremlin separatists since 2014.




Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia’s main goal was to protect Donetsk and Luhansk, after the leader of one of the separatist regions asked for additional forces from Moscow.
Russia’s RIA news agency quoted a pro-Moscow separatist spokesperson Eduard Basurin as saying Ukrainian troops were effectively cut off in Sievierodonetsk and should “surrender or die”.
Last week, Ukraine’s defence minister said up to 100 of his troops were dying daily and 500 sustaining injuries. Previously, Zelensky had estimated 60-100 Ukrainian soldiers were dying daily.
Agence France-Presse, dpa and Reuters


Ukraine strikes Russian Baltic port, hundreds of drones shot down

Europe’s response to Iran war risks becoming its ‘darkest hour’

As Iran’s drones swarm Gulf, Ukraine’s wartime tech lands billion-dollar deals

Rubio, G7 diplomats duel over wars in Iran and Ukraine

Ukraine war

Ukraine war: ‘Surrender or die’ choice in Sievierodonetsk after Russian forces destroy bridges to city

A satellite image shows damaged railroad bridges in the northwest of Sievierodonetsk, Ukraine on June 11, 2022. Photo: Maxar Technologies

Civilians are taking shelter at the Azot chemical plant in Sievierodonetsk. Photo: Reuters

Gruesome scenes and anguish in Ukraine frontline city Lysychansk: ‘They bomb and bomb’

Yevgeniya Panicheva stands in the yard of a house where two neighbours were killed during shelling in the city of Lysychansk. Photo: AFP

A children’s playground, damaged during shelling, in Lysychansk. Photo: Reuters

An unexploded shell in Lysychansk. Photo: Reuters

Ukraine exhumes bodies with ‘knees shot, hands tied’ from makeshift forest graves

A member of an extraction crew at a mass grave near Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine. Photo: AP

Ukrainian police exhume the bodies of civilians allegedly killed by Russian soldiers. Photo: Kyodo

Russia’s ex-PM says Vladimir Putin ‘out of it’, Ukraine war could last two years

Russian President Vladimir Putin watching the  Victory Day military parade in Moscow in May. Photo: Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin and former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov in 2004. File photo: AFP 

Amnesty accuses Russia of war crimes in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, where civilians died in ‘indiscriminate’ attacks

A road sign damaged by cluster munitions on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine. Photo: Reuters

News

World

Europe

Russia & Central Asia


Regional governor says getting into Sievierodonetsk ‘no longer possible’ after Russian forces destroy last bridge to embattled city
Ukraine’s president has issued increasingly urgent calls for more Western heavy weapons to help defend Sievierodonetsk



Russian forces have cut off all routes for evacuating citizens from the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk by destroying the last bridge linking it to a Ukrainian-held city on the other side of the river.


Ukraine

Russia