Russian troops slowly advancing towards Sievierodonetsk * City administration head says evacuations are not possible
A Ukrainian court sentenced two captured Russian soldiers to 11 and a half years in jail on Tuesday for shelling a town in eastern Ukraine, the second war crimes verdict since the start of Russia’s invasion in February.
Alexander Bobikin and Alexander Ivanov, who listened to the verdict standing in a reinforced glass box at the Kotelevska district court in central Ukraine, both pleaded ‘guilty’ last week.
A ship has left the Ukrainian port of Mariupol for the first time since Russia took the city and is headed east to Russia with a load of metal, the Russian-backed separatist leader of the Ukrainian breakaway region of Donetsk said on Tuesday.
Ukraine said the shipment of metal to Russia from Mariupol, whose capture gave Moscow an overland bridge linking mainland Russia and pro-Russian separatist territory to annexed-Crimea, amounted to looting.
“Today 2,500 tons of hot-rolled sheets left the port of Mariupol,” Denis Pushilin, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “The ship headed for (the Russian city of) Rostov.”
Russia seized full control of Mariupol earlier this month when more than 2,400 Ukrainian fighters surrendered at the besieged Azovstal steelworks. Russia said last week that the port had been demined and was open again to commercial vessels.
British military intelligence said on Tuesday that Russia was advancing slowly into Ukraine’s Luhansk Oblast, adding that the massing of its forces in a small area raised risks for others elsewhere.
“Progress has been slow but gains are being held. Routes into the pocket likely remain under Ukrainian control,” Britain’s Defense Ministry said in a Twitter update.
“Russia has achieved greater local successes than earlier in the campaign by massing forces and fires in a relatively small area. This forces Russia to accept risk elsewhere in occupied territory.”
Russian troops slowly advancing towards Sievierodonetsk
Russian troops are slowly advancing towards the center of the city of Sievierodonetsk in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, regional governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukrainian state television on Tuesday.
Gaidai said Ukrainian troops defending Sievierodonetsk were not at risk of being encircled as they could retreat to Lysychansk across the river.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Tuesday that its forces had downed a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region and bombed a radar station and two ammunition depots in eastern Ukraine.
Evacuations not possible
Ukraine is still in control of Sievierodonetsk city and its soldiers are fighting slowly advancing Russian troops but evacuations of civilians are not currently possible, the head of the city’s administration said on Tuesday.
“The city is still in Ukrainian hands and it’s putting up a fight… (but) evacuations are not possible due to the fighting,” Oleksandr Stryuk told Ukrainian television.