Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - On Monday, Russian forces were fighting to reach one of their strategic goals in Ukraine , while separat...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - On Monday, Russian forces were fighting to reach one of their strategic goals in Ukraine, while separatists backed by Moscow said they were pushing into Lysychansk, the last major city in eastern Luhansk province still held by Ukrainian troops.
The twin city of Lysychansk, Sievierodonetsk, fell on Saturday. This was a win for Moscow's plan to help pro-Russian separatists take over the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk in the east.
A separatist official was quoted by the Tass news agency on Sunday as saying that Moscow's forces had come into Lysychansk from five directions and were cutting off Ukrainian defenders. The report could not be proven by Reuters.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said that Russian forces were trying to cut Lysychansk off from the south with artillery, but they didn't say anything about separatists entering the city.
Elena, an elderly woman from Lysychansk, was one of dozens of people who took a bus from the front lines to the Ukrainian-held town of Pokrovsk.
"The last week in Lysychansk was terrible. We couldn't take it anymore yesterday, "she told me. "I've already asked my husband to bury me behind the house if I die."
A separatist official told the RIA news agency that more than 250 people, including children, were taken out of the Azot chemical plant in Sievierodonetsk on Sunday by separatist forces.
The industrial area was the last part of Sievierodonetsk that Ukrainian forces held before they left on Saturday after weeks of heavy fighting that left the town in ruins.
KYIV STRIKES
On Sunday, Russian missiles hit an apartment building near a kindergarten in Kyiv. This happened as world leaders were meeting in Germany to talk about more sanctions against Russia.
Deputy Mayor Mykola Povoroznyk said that the first Russian attack on the capital in weeks killed one person and hurt six others.
In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that a hurt 7-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble of a 9-story apartment building. He said that the strike killed the girl's father.
"Nothing in our country was a threat to her. She was completely safe until Russia decided that everything was now hostile to them, including women, children, kindergartens, houses, hospitals, and trains "Zelenskiy said.
A member of the Ukrainian air force said that four to six long-range missiles were fired from bombers in southern Russia, which were more than 1,000 km (621 miles) away.
As leaders from the Group of Seven nations met in Germany for a summit, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called the strikes "barbaric." Russia denies targeting civilians.
As they posed for a group photo at the summit, some of the other G7 leaders made fun of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, said that the leaders should take their shirts off and "show them our pecs." He was referring to Putin's shirtless poses over the years, including ones he did while riding a horse.
Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, said, "We'll get the bare-chested horseback riding show." Ursula von der Leyen, who is president of the European Union, replied: "Oh yes. The best thing to do is ride a horse."
Britain, Canada, Japan, and the U.S. proposed a ban on importing gold from Russia. This was done to punish wealthy Russians who had been buying bullion as a safe haven to protect their money from the effects of Western sanctions.
The leaders meeting in the Bavarian Alps are also likely to talk about putting a price cap on Russian oil and trying to stop food and energy prices from going up around the world.
A source familiar with the situation told Reuters on Sunday that the US is likely to announce this week that it will buy an advanced surface-to-air missile defence system for Ukraine with a medium- to long-range.
Missiles hit the city centre.
Sunday, Russian missiles also hit the central city of Cherkasy, which had not been bombed much until now, according to officials. One person was killed and five others were hurt.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the president of Ukraine, said that the attack also hit a strategic bridge that linked the western battlefields to the eastern ones.
"They want to stop us from sending our reserves and weapons from the West to the east," he told Reuters.
Russia's defence ministry said that it had hit military training centres in the areas of Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, and Lviv with high-precision weapons. This seems to be a reference to strikes that Ukraine said happened on Saturday. No one said anything right away about the attacks on Kyiv and Cherkasy on Sunday.
The Kremlin said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24 was a "special military operation" to get rid of far-right nationalists and protect Russian security.
Kyiv and the West see this as a pointless excuse for a war of choice that has killed thousands, forced millions to leave Ukraine, destroyed cities, and caused a lot of damage.
The conflict has caused gas, oil, and food prices to go up. It has also made the European Union less dependent on Russian energy and made Finland and Sweden want to join NATO.
Sunday, Russia got closer to defaulting because there were few signs that investors in its international bonds had been paid. This would be the first time the country had defaulted in decades.
