SLOVAK – The hastily fleeing Russian soldiers are no longer in the precious woods of Lyman. Those who did not remain on the ground, have repositioned themselves, better, hidden, along the route to Kreminna. And it is there, always a little further east, in a Ukrainian counter-offensive that pushes the Army out, that artillery shells are now heard. The city of Lyman, with the Sviati Hory National Park that descends towards Slovjansk and Bakhmut, a park reduced to a pigsty after four months of Russian bivouacs, is completely liberated. From yesterday at 12.30, as announced by the president Volodymir Zelensky.
Almost five thousand settlements in this densely urbanized East of Ukraine have recovered from the counter-offensive that began in early September and led by the 93rd Mechanized Brigade. Now, after the reconquest of Izjum and Lyman, straddling the Kharkhiv oblast and Donetsk’s Donbass, the units are consolidating the holdings of Torske and Zarichne, Yampolivka and Terny.
Roman Vlasenkothe military leader of Severodonetsk, the city taken by the Russians on June 24 after a two-month siege, tells Republic: “Our army now looks to Lugansk, almost all in the hands of the occupiers. After attacking, and taking, Kreminna and Svatove, the Ukrainian forces will return to deal with us.” Of Severodonetsk, in fact, a large city, one hundred thousand inhabitants, which since last spring has become a symbol. And they will take care of the sister city, Lysychansk. Both are home to an exhausted population: “They are not ready to face the winter,” explains Vlasenko.
“Ours forever”: Putin annexes four regions of Ukraine to Russia and evokes the atomic bomb. From the “satanist” West to gender, here’s what he said
by our correspondent Rosalba Castelletti
The words then, at the end of June, spoken by the presidential adviser Oleksji Arestovych about the Ukrainian retreat with the rafts in the river, now they sound prophetic: “In the Donbass the Russians were forcing us to fight as they want, head to head, like rams. It is better to retreat, save lives, keep weapons and then, when we are well equipped thanks to the new Western aid, return to conquer the lost ground “.
Western weapons, in particular the Himars multiple rocket launchers, have arrived and now the home battalions can also refuel the vehicles abandoned by the Army in the forest and between the fields: there are not enough tractors to move the Russian tanks. The National Guard soldiers took a minimally damaged Soviet-made T-72B3: it will return to fight on the other side. And the remains of a supersonic fighter show that Ukrainian anti-aircraft, in Lyman, inflicted heavy casualties.
Ukraine: “One week in prison for not voting ‘yes’ to annexation”
by our correspondent Corrado Zunino
The treaties on annexed regions, released yesterday by the Kremlin, made it clear that the borders of the four Ukrainian occupied territories will be those existing on the day of the annexation. In 48 hours, however, the Ukrainian raids have already changed that geography and presumably will change it in the next few hours. Among other things, the operation of dispatching battalions of untrained conscripts to these front areas is showing delays on the one hand and could increase the level of losses for the Russian army without offering any breakthroughs to the war. The losses of the Ukrainians, several analysts point out, remained between 10 and 20 percent of the contingent.
And it is in Lyman that a betrayal of the Russian army has been consummated, which is making the military leaders fibrillate. Former generals say that the encirclement did not have to wait to initiate a retreat from the city which at that point became mournful. “Last Friday the soldiers were supposed to leave the area, but it was Putin who gave the order not to ruin the annexation ceremony with the announcement of a defeat.” One more day of resistance meant more deaths, a sacrifice dictated by the president’s cynicism.