Category: World

The city is a key target in Russia’s battle to capture the Donbas region, an area at its border with Ukraine that is rife with separatists loyal to Moscow who in 2014 unilaterally established independent provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin cited as justification for his invasion. Ukraine had been furiously defending it for weeks, and a Ukrainian presidential adviser had said its fate could be determined in the coming days.

Why is Ukraine’s Donbas region a target for Russian forces?

Kyiv did not confirm Russia’s capture of Lysychansk, and a Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman told the BBC on Sunday that the city was not under Russia’s “full control.”

But Yuriy Sak acknowledged that Ukrainian forces could retreat from parts of the city amid “very intense” Russian attacks. “For Ukrainians, the value of human life is a top priority, so sometimes we may retreat from certain areas so that we can retake them in the future,” Sak told the broadcaster.

Ukrainian troops withdrew from Severodonetsk, a neighboring city across a river to the east, just over a week ago. Russia’s capture of Lysychansk, if confirmed, would be a major victory that gives its troops clear access to Donetsk, the other region that makes up Donbas.

Ukraine retreats from Severodonetsk as Russia advances in the east

Control over Donbas is the primary goal of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, after it failed to capture the capital, Kyiv, and other areas in the initial weeks of the war. Russian troops and their allies have been making steady gains in the east, as officials in Kyiv say they are outgunned and running out of ammunition.

Sak told the BBC that Ukraine controlled other cities in Donetsk and argued that “the battle for the Donbas is not over yet.”

Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, said earlier in the day that Russian fighters had attacked Lysychansk and used tactics even more brutal than in Severodonetsk to overcome resistance there. Photos showed bombed-out residential buildings in Lysychansk early Sunday, amid a barrage reminiscent of the destruction of Severodonetsk that preceded Russia’s capture of that city.

A Russian-backed politician said Saturday that Lysychansk was “completely surrounded,” which Ukraine disputed.

But Ukrainian counterclaims were probably “outdated or erroneous,” according to an analysis from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War think tank, which cited unconfirmed videos showing Russian forces erecting a red “victory” flag in Lysychansk and “casually walking around” its neighborhoods.

“Ukrainian forces likely conducted a deliberate withdrawal from Lysychansk, resulting in the Russian seizure of the city on July 2,” it said.

By late Saturday night, Colin had weakened into a tropical depression and forecasters discontinued the tropical storm warning that had been in effect for parts of the North Carolina coast.

At 11 p.m. EDT Saturday, the storm’s center was about 15 miles (20 kilometers) north of Wilmington, North Carolina, with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph (55 kph). It was moving northeast at 7 mph (11 kph).

The storm is expected to further weaken and dissipate completely by Sunday night or Monday morning.

“Colin will continue to produce locally heavy rainfall across coastal portions of North Carolina through Sunday morning, where an additional 1 to 2 inches of rainfall is possible,” the center said.

Some Fourth of July celebrations planned Saturday in Charleston, South Carolina, were canceled after significant water had pooled on the field at Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park and more rain was expected.

“Obviously, we’re disappointed,” said Scott Watson, the city’s director of cultural affairs. “This promised to be a great family event, and we hate to have to cancel.”

Organizers were also forced to cancel a festival planned in Southport, North Carolina.

“The safety of Festival goers, vendors, volunteers, emergency workers and everyone is our highest priority,” festival spokesperson Trisha Howarth said in a statement.

Separately, the center of Tropical Storm Bonnie rolled into the Pacific on Saturday after a rapid march across Central America, where it caused flooding, downed trees and forced thousands of people to evacuate in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. There were no immediate reports of deaths.

By Saturday night, Bonnie was centered about 165 miles (270 kilometers) south of San Salvador, El Salvador, with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kph). It was moving to the west at 17 mph (28 kph).

It’s one of the rare storms to make an Atlantic to Pacific crossing without losing tropical storm force, thus maintaining its name. Forecasters said Bonnie is likely to become a hurricane by Monday off the southern coast of Mexico, but is unlikely to make a direct hit on land.

Many Nicaraguans still remember Hurricane Joan, a powerful 1988 storm that wreaked havoc on the coast and caused almost 150 deaths in the country.

“We are waiting for the storm to hit, hoping that it won’t destroy our region,” Bluefields resident Ricardo Gómez, who was 8 when Joan hit, said before Bonnie arrived.

The area was also battered by two powerful hurricanes, Eta and Iota, in quick succession in 2020, causing an estimated $700 million in damage.

Officials in Costa Rica expressed concern that the storm would unleash landslides and flooding in an area already saturated by days of rain. The government said seven shelters in the northern part of the country already held nearly 700 people displaced by flooding.

“Over the last day, the occupiers opened fire from all available kinds of weapons,” Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said Saturday on the Telegram messaging app.

A river separates Lysychansk from Sievierodonetsk, and Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, said during an online interview late Saturday that Russian forces had managed for the first time to cross the river from the north, creating a “threatening” situation. He said they had not reached the center of the city, but control over Lysychansk would be decided by Monday.

Volodymyr Nazarenko, the second in command of the Svoboda battalion who was part of the June 24 retreat from Sievierodonetsk, said the Russians had “methodically leveled” the city. He described how Russian tanks targeted one building after another, moving on after each one was destroyed.

“So they use these tactics where barrages of ammunition are used to destroy the city and turn it into a burnt-down desert,” Nazarenko said from the relative safety of Bakhmut, a city to the southwest.

He also said Russian troops “obliterated any potential defensive positions with constant artillery and burned down forests to prevent trench warfare.”

Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk are the two provinces that make up the Donbas, where Russia has focused its offensive since pulling back from northern Ukraine and the capital, Kyiv, in the spring.

Pro-Russia separatists have held portions of both eastern provinces since 2014, and Moscow recognizes all of Luhansk and Donetsk as sovereign republics. Syria’s government said Wednesday that it would also recognize the “independence and sovereignty” of the two areas and work to establish diplomatic relations with the separatists.

In Slovyansk, a major Donetsk city still under Ukrainian control, four people died when Russian forces fired cluster munitions late Friday, Mayor Vadym Lyakh said on Facebook. He said the neighborhoods that were hit didn’t contain any potential military targets.

The leader of neighboring Belarus, a Russian ally, claimed Saturday that Ukraine fired missiles at military targets on Belarusian territory several days ago but all were intercepted by the air defense system. President Alexander Lukashenko described it as a provocation and noted that no Belarusian soldiers are fighting in Ukraine. There was no immediate response from the Ukrainian military.

Belarus hosts Russian military units and was used as a staging ground for Russia’s invasion. Last week, just hours before Lukashenko was to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian long-range bombers fired missiles on Ukraine from Belarusian airspace for the first time.

Lukashenko has so far resisted efforts to draw his army into the war. But during their meeting, Putin announced that Russia planned to supply Belarus with the Iskander-M missile system and reminded Lukashenko of how dependent his government is on economic support from Russia.

Lukashenko on Saturday also claimed that two Belarusian truck drivers were killed in Ukraine. Ukraine said the truckers were at a gas station when it was hit by a Russian airstrike in March, but Lukashenko claimed the organs were cut out of their bodies to hide evidence that they were shot.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, investigators combed through the wreckage from a Russian airstrike early Friday on residential areas near the Ukrainian port of Odesa that killed 21 people.

Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Iryna Venediktova said the investigators were recovering fragments from missiles that struck an apartment building in the small coastal town of Serhiivka. They also were taking measurements to determine the trajectory of the weapons and “the specific people guilty of this terrible war crime,” she said.

Larissa Andruchenko said she was in the kitchen making tea at about 1 a.m. when a blast blew the doors open. At first she thought the propane gas tank had exploded, and called her husband to the kitchen.

“And right then the lights went off and it was nightmare. The two of us are in the kitchen with glass flying, everything was flying,” she said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said three anti-ship missiles struck “an ordinary residential building, a nine-story building” housing about 160 people. The victims of Friday’s attack also included four members of a family staying at a seaside campsite, he said.

‘I emphasize: This is deliberate direct Russian terror, and not some mistake or an accidental missile strike,” Zelenskyy said.

The British Defense Ministry said Saturday that air-launched anti-ship missiles generally don’t have precision accuracy against ground targets. It said Russia likely was using such missiles because of a shortage of more accurate weapons.

The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed that the Russian military is targeting fuel storage sites and military facilities, not residential areas, although missiles also recently hit an apartment building in Kyiv and a shopping mall in the central city of Kremenchuk.

On Saturday, Kremenchuk Mayor Vitaliy Maletskyy said the death toll in the mall attack had risen to 21 and one person was still missing.

Ukrainian authorities interpreted the missile attack in Odesa as payback for the withdrawal of Russian troops from a nearby Black Sea island with both symbolic and strategic significance in the war that started with Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow portrayed their departure from Snake Island as a “goodwill gesture” to help unblock exports of grain.

— The director of a charity helping the family of a British man captured in eastern Ukraine said Dylan Healy was detained on April 25 at a Russian checkpoint in the south of the Zaporizhzhia region. Dominik Byrne, director of operations at Presidium Network, told The Associated Press that Healy is an aid worker and has no connection either to the Ukrainian or the British military.

Healy is among at least five foreigners, including four Britons, being held by separatists, who accuse them of being mercenaries fighting for Ukraine. Three have been sentenced to death. The charges against Healy were announced Friday.

Follow AP’s coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine