L’Ukraine affirme avoir repris la moitié de la ville de Sievierodonetsk
Ukraine says it has retaken half of Sievierodonetsk
Ukraine said on Sunday that its forces were in control of "half" of Sievierodonetsk. The governor of the Luhansk region, Serhi Haidai, said in an interview broadcast on social networks that "our armed forces have cleared half" of this industrial centre of Russian troops.
Eight Russians were taken prisoner, he also said. He said the Russian military had been ordered to seize the town by 10 June, as well as a communication route linking two nearby towns, Lyssychansk and Bakhmut. "We expect that in the near future [the Russians] will throw all the reserves - in men and equipment - that they now have access to at these two tasks," the governor continued. "In the next five days, there will be a sharp increase in the number of heavy artillery bombardments" by the Russians, Mr Haidai concluded.
On Sunday morning, he said the Russians were losing ground in the key eastern Ukrainian city, which they controlled by 70 percent. On Saturday, the mayor of the city, Oleksandr Striouk, had assured that the Ukrainian military had "managed to redeploy, to build a line of defence", and described "street fighting" in Sievierodonetsk.
In contrast, the Russian defence ministry said yesterday that Ukrainian units "suffering critical losses in the fighting [up to 90% in several units]" were retreating to the nearby major city of Lyssychansk.
According to the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW), whose analysis is corroborated by that of the British Ministry of Defence, the dynamic has indeed changed and Ukrainian forces are "successfully slowing down (...) Russian assaults in Sievierodonetsk through careful and effective local counterattacks".