KYIV, Ukraine – The Ukrainian national guard disputed a Russian politician’s claim Saturday that Moscow’s forces had “completely surrounded” Lysychansk, a bombarded Ukrainian city that is key to Russia’s efforts to capture the Donbas region.
The dueling claims about Lysychansk, in the Luhansk province, follow missile strikes that killed at least 21 people near the Black Sea port of Odessa on Friday and hit the southern city of Mykolaiv, where the mayor reported more explosions early Saturday. While the Kremlin denied targeting civilians, Kyiv said a 12-year-old boy was killed in the strike near Odessa that hit an apartment block and a recreation center.
Ukraine also called on Turkey to detain a Russian-flagged cargo ship, loaded with stolen Ukrainian grain, that it said had sailed from the Russian-controlled Berdyansk port bound for Turkey’s Black Sea coast. Millions of metric tons of grain await export from Ukraine, as Russia blockades shipping lanes and poorer countries bear the brunt of shortages and rising prices.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov told Russian state-owned news agency TASS that Russia had encircled Lysychansk and was preparing to begin a “full-scale offensive” on it. He shared a video on Telegram of Russian forces erecting a red “victory” flag in what he said was the city’s central park.
The Russian Defense Ministry had previously claimed to be in control of an oil refinery, a mine and a gelatin factory in Lysychansk, according to TASS.
Ukrainian National Guard spokesman Ruslan Muzychuk said Saturday that the city had not fallen.
“There are fierce battles near Lysychansk, but, fortunately, the city is not encircled and is under the control of Ukrainian troops. At the same time, Russia is trying to create favorable conditions for an offensive in the southern regions: the Mykolaiv region and part of the Kharkiv region,” Muzychuk said on Ukrainian national television.
Muzychuk said Russia was continuing to seek control of the border between Luhansk and Donetsk, the provinces that make up the Donbas region.
At least 21 people were killed Monday in a Russian airstrike on a shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported in an update Saturday.
Workers finished clearing the rubble Saturday from the blast at the Amstor shopping center and found 29 body fragments, the emergency response agency said. More than 65 people were injured, including 26 who were hospitalized, it said.
The strike on a center of daily civilian life came during an escalation in Russian missile attacks across Ukraine and underscored the urgency of Ukraine’s requests for Western countries to send more advanced weapons. Witnesses of the mall attack described scenes of “hell” after the explosion.
After the missile strike, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia has become a “terrorist” state. Speaking by video link to NATO leaders at a summit in Madrid, he appealed for more modern artillery systems and other weapons to help repel Russian invasion forces and counter airstrikes.
Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto says war in Europe is a possibility, and that the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine meant the Nordic nation could not maintain its long-standing policy of military nonalignment.
“Of course it’s a possibility,” he told CNN on Friday about the prospect that the conflict in Europe could widen beyond Ukraine. “That’s why it’s so important to support Ukraine at the moment because if Ukraine is losing, then this … can spread to other countries.”
As it reinforces its border with Russia, Finland is seeking to join NATO in a tectonic shift that was triggered by the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine and would lengthen the Western military alliance’s frontiers with Russia. U.S. and European officials have moved to speed up the accession of Finland and Sweden, which also applied, although the plans have faced hurdles from NATO member Turkey.
“For us, the NATO membership, the support started from the 24th of February, when we saw that the security architecture of Europe has been broken,” Haavisto said of his country’s NATO application. “This security architecture cannot prevent war in Europe.”
Russia remains a “reliable producer and supplier of grain, fertilizers and energy,” Russian President Vladimir Putin has assured Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a phone call Friday, Putin said “systemic mistakes made by a number of countries” have disrupted trade in food products and caused price increases, Russia’s Tass news agency reported.
India, which has not joined international sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, depends on Moscow for imports of grain, fuel and military hardware.
Putin and Modi “exchanged ideas on how bilateral trade in agricultural goods, fertilizers and pharma products could be encouraged further,” the Indian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
As Europe seeks to reduce its use of Russian oil, India is a likely alternative market for Russian energy. Many of Modi’s political supporters value good relations with Russia above those with the United States, and since the invasion of Ukraine in February, the Indian leader has trod carefully in dealings with Moscow. During the Friday call, Modi reiterated India’s long-standing position in favor of dialogue and diplomacy to end the Ukraine conflict, his office said.
(c) 2022, The Washington Post · David L. Stern, Ellen Francis, Amy Cheng, Andrew Jeong, Julian Duplain, Marisa Iati
