Ukraine Orders Withdrawal From Severodonetsk to Avoid Encirclement.
The war continues with some new materiel and the usual disinformation claiming that both sides are running out of personnel.
To take Sievierodonetsk, Russia had to devastate it with artillery strikes. The Ukrainian government has said that about 90 percent of the buildings are destroyed. There are an estimated 8,000 civilians in the city, and Ukrainian officials have said they cannot safely be evacuated to Ukrainian controlled territory.
Just as the siege and destruction of Mariupol became emblematic of the savagery of the war in its early months, the fight for Sievierodonetsk offered a window into the brutal nature of the Russian offensive in the east. Russia has relied on its vast arsenal of artillery, rockets and air power to smash towns and villages into ruins as it grinds its way to capturing territory.
But holding territory is different from smashing it. The street-by-street fighting that raged in Sievierodonetsk for weeks demonstrated the challenges that lie ahead for Russian forces as they try to move on heavily fortified Ukrainian positions farther west.
The fight for the twin cities has been among the bloodiest of the war, with both sides suffering heavy casualties. Over the course of the battle, the Ukrainians made desperate pleas to the west to speed up the delivery of heavy weapons as they were vastly outgunned by Russian forces. As the battle intensified, Ukrainian officials said that as many as 200 soldiers a day were dying in the fields and villages of eastern Ukraine.
The Russians have also suffered staggering losses, according to military analysts. But they have continued to pour men, armor and artillery into the fight for this one pocket of land about the size of Detroit.
It could not be determined how many soldiers are pulling out of the Sievierodonetsk, and with all of the bridges across the Siversky Donets River destroyed, it was unclear how they would get out en masse.
Ukrainian soldiers have been shuttling people across the river in small boats. Some soldiers have had to to swim.
The situation across the river in Lysychansk is growing more perilous, and the city is in grave danger of being encircled by Russian forces.
www.nytimes.com/...
Russian forces will likely prioritize completing the operational encirclement of Lysychansk from Lyman in the future, rather than conducting a ground assault on Slovyansk. Russian forces continue to shell Siversk (approximately 28 km northwest of Lysychansk), likely in an effort to interdict the remaining Ukrainian GLOCs to Lysychansk.[22] Russian milblogger Yuri Kotyenok noted that Russian forces will attempt to seize Lysychansk before mid-July ahead of the rainy season, which would complicate Russian advances due to muddy roads.[23] Kotyenok added that Russian forces do not have enough manpower to encircle heavily fortified Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, or advance north of Avdiivka. Russian forces will need recovery time to initiate advances on Slovyansk, following the grinding campaign to capture Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
www.understandingwar.org/...
Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued to advance toward Lysychansk from the south and launched assaults on Severodonetsk. Russian forces continued to push on Lysychansk from Vovchoyarivka and Bila Hora in its southern outskirts on June 24.[9] Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated that Ukrainian forces are fighting their last battles in the city’s industrial zone before their full withdrawal.[10] Severodonetsk Regional State Administration Head Roman Vlasenko stated that Russian forces are launching assaults on settlements just southeast of Severodonetsk.[11] Ukrainian Defense Ministry Spokesperson Oleksandr Motuzyanyk reported that Russian forces intensified airstrikes throughout the Luhansk Oblast frontline and deployed S-300 anti-aircraft missiles systems to cover their air offensive group.[12] Combat footage indicates that Russian forces are using air attacks to destroy the remaining bridges and roads to Lysychansk.[13] Russia’s Defense Ministry also posted footage of Russian Central Military District Commander Alexander Lapin in occupied Stepove (just west of Luhansk City) on June 23.[14] Lapin’s arrival in Luhansk may indicate that the Kremlin is preparing to declare victory in Severodonetsk in the coming days.
Russian forces likely encircled some Ukrainian forces in Zolote and continued to attack Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) along the T1303 Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway. Hirske District Head Oleksiy Babchenko reported that Russian forces occupied all settlements in Hirske district following a breakthrough from the east.[15] Hirske is situated just northeast of Ukrainian fortifications in Zolote, and Russian control of the settlement indicates that Russian forces have successfully bypassed and encircled Ukrainian positions. Babchenko said that Ukrainian officials ordered a withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Zolote three to four days ago. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Russian forces encircled 1,800 Ukrainian servicemen in Zolote-Hirske, but ISW is unable to verify the number of Ukrainian servicemen remaining in the settlement.[16] Ukrainian forces also lost access to the T1303 Hirske-Lysychansk highway and adjacent roads, with the last humanitarian shipment arriving in Hirske on June 17.[17] Motuzyanyk reported that Russian forces are fighting in Mykolaivka and Berestove to interdict the adjacent T1303.[18]
www.understandingwar.org/...
1. Ukraine has some 700,000 troops in Ukraine & Russia has never had more than 200,000, probably ;es than half now. Russia is heavily outmanned & has an overweight only in Luhansk oblast.
2. The Ukrainian General staff claims they have killed more than 33,000 Russian soldiers. It might be slightly exaggerated but say 25,000. Add three times as many injured, that is, 100,000 Russian casualties.
3. Steady reports are arriving about Russian soldiers who desert or refuse to fight. Even Putin doesn't dare call for mobilization, because that would arouse the middle classes in the big cities. The Ukrainian soldiers have excellent moral.
4. Ukraine's weakness is weak artillery and too little ammunition, but hopefully the US deliveries will change this.
5. Russia appears to have lost 12 killed generals and several times more colonels. The command has changed at least three times & Putin appears to command far too much himself. This looks like chaos & desperation.
6. For some time, we have waited for a Ukrainian counteroffensive East of Kherson, cutting off Russia's land bridge between Crimea and Donbass. It might be about to materialize, if the Western artillery has arrived there.
7. Steady reports arrive about bombed & burnt ammunition and fuel depots in Russia. We don't know who does this. The Russians present them usually as accidents, but these are extensive actions, which must have significant effects.
8. Russia's propaganda is vile, calling for the extinction of Ukraine & Ukrainians. The Russian censorship & repression have reached Stalinist levels. Such a country cannot be well run.
9. The natural outcome of Russia's invasion in Ukraine is A. that Russia's unwilling soldiers rebel on a massive scale as in 1917,
B. that Putin is ousted by the Security Council,
C. that Putin's regime collapses &
D. that Ukraine is liberated.
10. Meanwhile, the West must:
A. completely isolate Russia,
B. cut all trade & financial transactions with Russia,
C. expel Russia from all possible international fora,
D. indict Russia in ICJ & Russian war criminals, including Putin, in ICJ in The Hague.
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When the first Russian bombs fell on Ukraine, Myroslava Marchenko was a gynaecologist at a private clinic in Kyiv. The next day, one of her patients was due to have an abortion after prenatal tests showed a high chance of Down’s syndrome.
Instead, like millions across the country, Marchenko and her patient fled to safety, crossing the border into Poland where abortions due to foetal abnormalities – or “on eugenic grounds” in the language of the country’s constitutional tribunal – are illegal.
“She called me and said, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t know what to do, because time is running out and my pregnancy is growing, but I don’t want to raise this child because it’s war, and I can’t manage it,’” Marchenko recalls. It was, she says, the first time that she understood the impact that Poland’s abortion laws, and the barriers that had been erected to prevent women accessing emergency contraception, could have on individual lives. Marchenko told her patient she should leave Poland and travel to the Czech Republic in order to access a safe termination.
Ukrainian children should not be adopted in Russia, where several thousand young people are believed to have been moved since Moscow's February invasion, a UN official said Tuesday.
"We're reiterating, including to the Russian Federation, that adoption should never occur during or immediately after emergencies," Asfhan Khan, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) regional director for Europe and Central Asia, told reporters.
Such children cannot be assumed to be orphans, and "any decision to move any child must be grounded in their best interests and any movement must be voluntary. Parents need to provide informed consent," said the official, who had just returned from a visit to Ukraine.
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The United Nations had already expressed concern in early March about the risk of forced adoption of Ukrainian children, especially the some 91,000 who were living in institutions or boarding schools at the beginning of the war, many of them located in the country's east.
www.barrons.com/...
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German consumers could face a tripling of gas prices in the coming months after Russia’s throttling of deliveries to Europe, a senior energy official has said. Moscow reduced the flow of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline by 40% last week, citing technical reasons that Berlin dismisses as a pretext, prompting a four- to sixfold rise in market prices, said the head of Germany’s federal network agency, Klaus Müller. Such “enormous leaps in price” were unlikely to be passed down entirely to consumers, he said, but German citizens had to brace for dramatically rising costs. “A doubling or tripling is possible,” he told public broadcaster ARD.
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Ukrainian forces are preparing to retreat from the strategic eastern city of Severodonetsk after weeks of fierce fighting. Sergiy Gaiday, governor of the Lugansk region that includes Severodonetsk, said Ukrainian military forces in the city had received the order to withdraw and remaining in the positions “just doesn’t make sense”, adding that 90% of the industrial city had been damaged. Severodonetsk’s military administration head, Roman Vlasenko, told Radio Svoboda that the Ukrainian army was still in the city and it would “take them some time to retire”.
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The European Council has approved €9bn of financial aid to Ukraine. In a statement made by the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, at the European Council summit in Brussels on Friday, he said: “There is a war in Ukraine and there is nothing to pay nurses, teachers, police, border guards or many other public services.”
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Russia has condemned the European Union’s decision to accept Ukraine and Moldova as membership candidates. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, said: “With the decision to grant Ukraine and Moldova the status of candidate countries, the European Union has confirmed that it continues to actively exploit the CIS on a geopolitical level, to use it to ‘contain’ Russia,” referring to Russia’s sphere of influence within the Commonwealth of Independent States, consisting of former Soviet countries.
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Canada will be able to seize and dispose of assets sanctioned as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, following the Canadian Senate’s passage of the budget of the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, on Thursday. The government will then be able to use the funds from seized assets to support Ukraine.
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Ukraine’s main domestic security agency said on Friday it had uncovered a Russian spy network involving Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach, who was previously accused by the US of being a Russian agent. The state security service said Derkach, whose whereabouts were not made clear, set up a network of private security firms to use them to ease and support the entry of Russian units into cities during Moscow’s 24 February invasion.
www.theguardian.com/...
Russian forces have made substantial gains in the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area over the last several days and Ukrainian troops continue to suffer high casualties, but Ukrainian forces have fundamentally accomplished their objective in the battle by slowing down and degrading Russian forces. Head of the Luhansk Oblast Administration Serhiy Haidai stated on June 23 that Ukrainian troops may have to retreat to avoid encirclement in Lysychansk, which indicates that Ukrainian authorities are setting conditions to prepare for the ultimate loss of both Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.[6] As ISW has previously assessed, however, the loss of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk will not represent a major turning point in the war.[7] Ukrainian troops have succeeded for weeks in drawing substantial quantities of Russian personnel, weapons, and equipment into the area and have likely degraded Russian forces' overall capabilities while preventing Russian forces from focusing on more advantageous axes of advance. Russian offensive operations will likely stall in the coming weeks, whether or not Russian forces capture the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area, likely granting Ukrainian forces the opportunity to launch prudent counteroffensives. The Kremlin’s ideological fixation on the capture of Severodonetsk, much like the earlier siege of Azovstal, will likely be to the ultimate detriment of Russian capabilities in future advances in Ukraine. The loss of Severodonetsk is a loss for Ukraine in the sense that any terrain captured by Russian forces is a loss—but the battle of Severodonetsk will not be a decisive Russian victory.
www.understandingwar.org/...
Key Takeaways
- Belarusian forces are conducting mobilization exercises along the Ukrainian border but are unlikely to enter the war in Ukraine due to their low capabilities and the adverse domestic implications of military involvement on behalf of Russia.
- Russian forces have likely reached the southern outskirts of Lysychansk and are reinforcing their grouping around Severodonetsk to complete the capture of both Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. These gains remain unlikely to provide Russian forces with a decisive edge in further operations in Ukraine and have further degraded Russian capabilities.
- Russian forces are continuing efforts to encircle the Ukrainian grouping in Hirske and Zolote and are likely moving to take control of these settlements.
- Russian forces have likely successfully interdicted Ukrainian lines of communication along the T1302 highway and are using recent gains along the highway to reinforce assaults on Lysychansk.
- Russian forces amassed equipment and continued building defensive capabilities along the Southern Axis.