Ukrainian forces are still holding out in Syevyerodonetsk, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, despite being outnumbered and outgunned by the Russian military.
“There are more of them, they are more powerful, but we have every chance to fight on this direction,” Zelenskiy said, adding that the intense house-to-house fighting and the Russians’ indiscriminate shelling have turned Syevyerodonetsk and its twin city of Lysychansk into “dead cities.”
Regional governor Serhiy Hayday said on June 7 Ukrainian forces are finding it hard to stave off Russian attacks in the center of Syevyerodonetsk, but Moscow’s forces do not control the city. Hayday also said Russian troops were constantly shelling Lysychansk, which lies across the Severskiy Donets river.
If captured, the two strategic targets that are still in Ukrainian hands would deliver Russian forces the entire Luhansk region in Ukraine’s east.
The Ukrainian armed forces said in a morning update on June 7 that Russia’s “main efforts” remain focused on Syevyerodonetsk and on nearby Bakhmut, where another counterattack has been launched.
The Russians’ advance last month toward Popasna, some 50 kilometers south of Syevyerodonetsk, stalled last week, Britain’s Defense Ministry said on June 7 in its daily intelligence bulletin.
The bulletin said that Moscow will “almost certainly” need to achieve a breakthrough either in Popasna, or north of Syevyerodonetsk, in the Izyum area if it wants to achieve “success and progress towards its political objective of controlling all of Donetsk Oblast.”
Zelenskiy said in his nightly address on June 6 that there may be more than 2,500 prisoners from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol now detained by the Russians in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine.
Zelenskiy said the Russians’ intentions regarding those prisoners were changing constantly. Moscow-backed separatist officials in Donetsk have spoken of putting some of the Azovstal defenders on trial for alleged human rights abuses in Ukraine.
The bodies of some Ukrainian fighters killed during the siege of Azovstal have been returned by the Russian forces to Ukraine, the Association of Families of Azovstal Defenders said.
The association said forensic examination of the bodies may take up to three months. Relatives of the victims are participating in identification procedures.
Mariupol residents have been facing a growing humanitarian crisis, compounded by acute shortages of food and water.
A Ukrainian official said June 6 that contamination from decomposing corpses and rubbish had sparked a cholera outbreak — prompting a citywide quarantine.
“We are seeing the city get closed off,” Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the city’s mayor, told the media.
Zelenskiy also said the country is hoping to create secure corridors that would allow its ships to export grain from Black Sea ports blocked by the fighting.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on June 7 arrived in Turkey for talks on unblocking grain exports from Ukraine.
Turkey has offered to escort maritime convoys from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, which have been blocked by Moscow’s offensive.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on June 7 said Poland is in the process of signing a wide-ranging treaty for the delivery of weapons to Ukraine.
The deal is “one of the biggest, if not the biggest weapons export deal of the last 30 years,” Morawiecki said after visiting a Polish armaments company. He said the weapons would be critical in helping Ukraine drive out the Russian invaders.
He did not provide specifics on the kinds of weapons to be transferred or other details of the deal, but during a presentation at the company, he and Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak posed in front of self-propelled gun systems.
