A day after two people were killed in a Russian attack on a market, residents of Slovyansk in eastern Ukraine have been instructed to leave. On Wednesday morning, as the Russian military moved from the north and east, civilians boarded minibusses to flee the city.
The fight for Slovyansk may be the next crucial engagement in the conflict for the Donbas, according to the UK’s Defence Intelligence, which added that Russian soldiers were most likely 10 miles north of the city.
Per Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko, the entire Donetsk region has been turned into a flashpoint where it is perilous for civilians to remain.
“I call on everyone to evacuate, evacuation saves lives,” he said on social media.
Following an unsuccessful attempt to seize control of Kyiv, Russia turned its attention in March to the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. Russian forces have taken over the Luhansk region, which is north and east of Slovyansk, and are currently moving into the remaining portions of Donetsk.
Russian analysts claimed that the loss of Luhansk’s final city has opened the door for an invasion of the west and south.
Serhiy Haidai, the regional commander for Ukraine in Luhansk, claimed that military operations on the Donetsk region’s border with Russia continued to frustrate Russian soldiers, notably near the main route connecting Lysychansk and Bakhmut.
Vladislav Shurygin, a Russian military specialist, told the newspaper Izvestia that clearing minefields would take several days. Still, he said that the army would fight for Slovyansk and nearby Kramatorsk and drive Ukrainian soldiers away from the city of Donetsk.
When the conflict in eastern Ukraine started in 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Russian-backed forces occupied Slovyansk; however, Ukrainian forces retook it two and a half months later. On Tuesday, Russian artillery attacked the city and set fire to the market as locals celebrated the anniversary of Ukraine’s victory eight years ago.
Local authorities in other parts of the country reported that a civilian was killed early on Wednesday by a Russian cruise missile attack on a cafe in the southern Mykolaiv district; the midnight shelling of a university building in Kharkiv resulted in the death of a security guard.
On Wednesday, Micheál Martin, the president of Ireland, traveled to a few of the Kyiv-area communities that the Russian bombing had severely damaged. Additionally, the Taoiseach visited a mass grave in the city of Bucha.
According to Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian security council, Moscow’s principal objective is still reportedly to overthrow Ukraine’s government and seize a sizable portion of its territory, even though Russian forces withdrew from the area around Kyiv a month after the invasion began.
Patrushev reiterated Russian President Vladimir Putin’s prior assertions of “de-Nazifying” and “demilitarizing” Ukraine, adding that these goals would be realized despite Western military assistance to Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is of Jewish ancestry with no known ties to the far right.
In a tense nine-minute phone call with President Emmanuel Macron at the time of the invasion, Putin claimed that President Zelenskyy was not legitimately elected and that he took office during a bloodbath in which people were burned alive. The exchange was shown in a French documentary last week.
According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, broadcasting the call violated diplomatic protocol, but he added that Putin’s remarks were not an embarrassment for Russia.
