Russia controls a “part” of an important Ukrainian city in Donbas

–
–This content was published on May 31, 2022 – 06:07

31 mayo 2022 – 06:07

(AFP)

Russian troops control a “part” of the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk, a major enclave in Donbas, regional authorities announced, just hours after the European Union approved an embargo on Moscow’s oil.

This industrial city is one of the focuses of the fighting in the Lugansk region of Donbas, a mining area in eastern Ukraine where Moscow focuses its offensive after failing to take kyiv.

“The situation is ultra-complicated. A part of Severodonetsk is controlled by the Russians,” Lugansk Governor Serguii Gaidai said, adding that his forces “remained in the city” and the invading troops “cannot move freely.”

The Russians “are concentrating on taking control of Severodonetsk,” the Ukrainian military said on Tuesday. “The enemy attacks our troops with mortars, artillery and grenade launchers across the entire front line,” he added.

Severodonetsk and its neighbor Lysychansk, on the other bank of the Donets River, are located just 80 km from Kramatorsk, the administrative capital of Donbas under kyiv control. Both have been enduring constant Russian bombardment for weeks.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said on Tuesday that there could be about 12,000 civilians left in this industrial city, which had about 100,000 inhabitants before the war.

The NGO distributed food and essential goods until last week in Severodonetsk and its surroundings, but “the intensification of fighting now makes distribution impossible,” said its secretary general Jen Egeland.

The day before, the French journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, of the BFMTV television network, died in that area while covering an evacuation of civilians near Severodonetsk.

– Oil embargo –

With Moscow forces tightening their grip on eastern Ukraine, the European Union has ratcheted up economic pressure on Russia with a sixth package of sanctions that includes an embargo on oil imports and banking restrictions.

The embargo agreed on Monday night by the 27 member states currently affects crude transported by ship, which accounts for two-thirds of the total imported from Russia, but should be extended to 90% by the end of the year.

This temporary exception will allow to continue receiving oil by pipeline to Hungary, highly dependent on crude from Moscow, which opposed a total embargo.

The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, affirmed that the measure will serve to cut off “an enormous source of financing” for the Russian “war machine”. “Maximum pressure on Russia to end the war,” he said.

The summit agreements also include a 9 billion euro ($9.63 billion) package to support the needy Ukrainian economy and the exclusion of three Russian banks from the SWIFT international financial system.

Among these is the country’s largest entity, Sberbank, which on Tuesday said it would continue to work “normally.”

“SWIFT’s exclusion does not change the situation for international transactions at all,” said the entity, whose activity abroad had already been severely limited since April by US and UK sanctions.

The European summit culminates this Tuesday with a second day dedicated to addressing the energy transition necessary to be able to do without Russian gas.

This dependency was highlighted again on Tuesday when the Russian giant Gazprom announced the cut off of supplies to the Netherlands because the country’s supplier, GasTerra, refused to pay for shipments in rubles as Moscow demands. Previously, Russia had already cut gas shipments to Poland, Bulgaria and Finland.

– Corridors to export cereals –

In Brussels, European leaders must also deal with the threat of the global humanitarian crisis due to the war in Ukraine, which has been unable to export its enormous cereal production since the start of the conflict.

kyiv and its Western allies accuse Moscow of practicing a maritime blockade of Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea, although Russia denies this and attributes the situation to international sanctions against its country.

Turkey, a member of NATO and a country bordering the Black Sea with fluid relations with Moscow, will host a visit by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on June 8 to discuss the deployment of “safe corridors” for the transport of Ukrainian grain. .

The day before, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was willing to work with this country on the free movement of goods in the Black Sea, including cereals from Ukraine, in a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Pending an eventual release, the pro-Russian separatists announced on Tuesday the reactivation of port activity in Mariupol, now under the control of Moscow after almost three months of siege.

“Today (Tuesday) 2,500 tons of rolled sheet coils left the port of Mariupol” in the direction of the Russian town of Rostov-on-Don, announced the pro-Russian separatist leader, Denis Pushilin.

This important port city fell definitively to Moscow in mid-May, with the surrender of the last Ukrainian fighters entrenched in the Azovstal steelworks.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced that during the inspection of this industrial complex it found the bodies of 152 Ukrainian combatants and that it is ready to hand them over to the kyiv authorities.

burx-cat/pz/dbh/an

–