Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said the battle for the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk will decide the fate of Donbas and is seeing probably the most difficult fighting since Russia’s invasion began.
“Sievierodonetsk remains the epicentre of the confrontation in Donbas,” Zelenskiy said in a late-night address to the nation on Wednesday evening, claiming that Ukraine had inflicted “significant losses on the enemy”.
However, regional leaders said earlier that Ukrainian forces had been pushed back to the outskirts of the key frontline city amid heavy fighting there and in frontline villages to the south as Russia pursues a breakthrough in Donbas.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk, said most of the city was now in Russian hands and that it was no longer possible to rescue civilians stranded there.
“Our [forces] now again control only the outskirts of the city. But the fighting is still going on, our [forces] are defending Sievierodonetsk. It is impossible to say the Russians completely control the city,” the governor said.
Zelenskiy corroborated reports of heavy fighting, saying the battle for Sievierodonetsk was “probably one of the most difficult during this war”.
“In particular the fate of Donbas is being decided there,” he added.
Earlier Haidai had acknowledged it was possible that Ukrainian forces would have to pull back to “stronger positions” although he also insisted that the defenders would fight for every inch of territory.
It is estimated there are around 15,000 civilians remaining in both Sievierodonetsk and neighbouring Lysychansk, which had a combined population of around 200,000 before the war. Many are elderly and a handful, Haidai said, were waiting for the Russians to bring peace to the area.
Moscow has intensified its focus on Sievierodonetsk to the point where Ukraine’s ministry of defence estimated that Russian forces had as much as 10 times more military equipment than Ukrainian troops in some areas of the city.
Zelenskiy described Donetsk, the region bordering Sievierodonetsk, as a “ghost town that has lost most people, thousands of lives and absolutely all prospects”.
Ukraine also reported increased air raids, plus heavy shelling, rocket-propelled grenade and mortar fire around Bakhmut, 30 miles (48km) south-west, where its interior ministry said a school, where 400 children were taught before the war, had been completely destroyed by artillery.
Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk are not strategic cities, say Ukrainian advisers, and Ukraine’s goal is to degrade the Russian military by fighting hard to for them. But they are the only remaining parts of the Luhansk oblast not under Russian control.
Russia changed its invasion plan in April after its botched attempt to seize the major cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa. The focus turned to Donbas, made up of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, the latter of which remains more under Ukrainian control.
The ministry of defence in Moscow said: “The Ukrainian group in the Donbas suffers significant losses in manpower, weapons and military equipment.” It said it had caused 480 casualties overnight in fighting in Donbas and elsewhere in the country.
Zelenskiy said in his overnight update that Russia was trying to “to attract additional resources in the Donbas” – arguing that Moscow had to turn to reinforcements because of the strength of the resistance.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in its morning update that Russia was attacking Sievierodonetsk and the Ukrainian pocket behind it “from three directions”. It added that “Ukrainian defences are holding”, saying: “It is unlikely that either side has gained significant ground in the last 24 hours.”
Both sides continue to take heavy casualties, although precise estimates are impossible to obtain. Ukrainian officials have said 100 or even 150 people a day are being killed in action, while Zelenskiy said overnight that “Russia has been paying almost 300 lives a day” since it launched the invasion on 24 February.
Fighting also continued around Mykolaiv as Ukraine persisted in trying to stage limited counterattacks towards the occupied city of Kherson. Russia said it had shot down two MiG-29 aircraft and a Mi-8 helicopter in the region, plus 11 drones.
The Russian-installed administration in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine plans to stage a referendum later this year on joining Russia, according to Russian news agencies. Russian-installed officials in Kherson province further west have already announced similar plans.
Ukraine said Russia was trying to distribute passports in the occupied Kherson region, offering a payment of 10,000 roubles (£132) as an incentive. Kyiv’s centre for national resistance said the same sum was being offered in neighbouring Zaporizhzhia region for the collection of “personal data” – but that the “vast majority” of the population was refusing to comply with the occupation administration.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the onus was on Ukraine to solve the problem of resuming grain shipments – stalled by a Black Sea naval blockade run by Moscow’s navy – at a press conference on Wednesday with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.
“We state daily that we’re ready to guarantee the safety of vessels leaving Ukrainian ports and heading for the Bosphorus gulf. To solve the problem, the only thing needed is for the Ukrainians to let vessels out of their ports, either by demining them or by marking out safe corridors,” he said.
Ukraine says it has no faith in the Russians and has no intention of trying to open its ports except as part of a wider international agreement. Meanwhile, a Russian news agency reported that 11 wagons of grain taken from Ukrainian silos in areas occupied by Moscow’s force were going to Crimea.
On Tuesday, Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, announced that a road corridor had opened between Russia and Crimea, running through the Ukrainian territory occupied since 24 February. The port of Mariupol, scene of the fiercest fighting earlier in the war, had now been de-mined and cargo ships were arriving.