Ukraine has staged a counterattack on the frontline city of Sievierodonetsk and recaptured a fifth of the city it had previously lost to Russian invaders, according to the head of the region.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk oblast, told Ukrainian television that Russian forces were forfeiting recent gains in the city, the easternmost held by Kyiv in the Donbas region, where fighting has been concentrated.
The governor said Russia had “previously managed to capture most of the city” – but added in a tweet that the military had pushed them back by 20%. “They are really suffering huge losses,” he said.
Such claims are hard to verify amid the heavy fighting, which had seen the Russian invaders concentrate their forces on trying to surround and capture the city in the past two weeks, advancing at a rate of 500m to 1km a day.
British defence intelligence said on Saturday that Russia had been able combine “airstrikes and massed artillery fires to bring its overwhelming firepower to bear” and so support “its creeping advance”.
But the British said it had come at a cost. The use of “unguided munitions has led to the widespread destruction of built-up areas in the Donbas”. Film released by Haidai early on Saturday showed apartment blocks damaged and on fire, while shelling was heard nearby.
Haidai acknowledged that the situation for the Ukrainians in Sievierodonetsk remained difficult, but said he believed the defenders could now hold out for another fortnight. A Russian victory in that timescale was “not realistic”, he added.
After that, the governor said, he hoped that newly promised western Himars multiple launch rocket systems could tip the balance in Kyiv’s favour, by allowing Ukraine to target them at a greater distance that before.
“But as soon as we have enough western long-range weapons, we will push their artillery away from our positions. And then, believe me, the Russian infantry, they will just run,” the governor added.
Foreign fighters from countries such as Australia, Georgia, France and Brazil were also being deployed by Ukraine in Sievierodonetsk, according to a video report released on Friday. It features an interview with a masked soldier speaking clearly with an Australian accent, saying he had “stepped up” to join the fighting.
The Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, said on Friday he had been told by Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, that Russia would now “accelerate” the invasion. New tactics that “will make it possible to significantly increase the effectiveness of offensive manoeuvres” had been identified, Kadyrov added.
But in an overnight assessment, the Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank closely following the conflict, said it was sceptical about the claims made. On speeding the rate of advance, the institute said it believed “Russian forces are unlikely to be able to do so”.
In Ukraine’s southern Odesa region on Saturday morning, a missile hit an agricultural storage unit, wounding two people, the regional administration’s spokesperson wrote on Telegram.
Ukraine said it had also shot down four other cruise missiles launched from a submarine in the Black Sea – while Russia’s defence ministry said its forces shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane near Odesa.
Two people died and at least two were injured in Russian shelling of civilian infrastructure in the north-eastern Kharkiv region on Friday, Ukraine’s Interfax reported, citing emergency services.
Russian authorities began issuing passports in Kherson and Melitopol on Friday, according to the Institute for the Study of War, while Ukraine’s military said the occupiers faced growing resistance in the southern region, which had forced Moscow to reinforce its troops there.
