Ukrainian forces pushed back from center of Severodonetsk

KYIV: Ukraine said Monday its forces had been pushed back from the center of key industrial city Severodonetsk, where President Volodymyr Zelensky described a fight for “literally every meter.”
The cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which are separated by a river, have been targeted for weeks as the last areas still under Ukrainian control in the eastern Lugansk region.
Regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said Monday Russian forces were “gathering more and more equipment” to “encircle” Severodonetsk, and that they had “pushed our troops from the center and continue to destroy our city.”
The local Azot chemical plant, where hundreds of civilians have reportedly taken refuge, was being “heavily shelled,” Gaiday said.
In Lysychansk, bombardments killed three civilians, including a six-year-old boy, he said.
Severodonetsk had been “de facto” blocked off after Russian forces blew up the “last” bridge connecting it to Lysychansk Sunday, Eduard Basurin, a representative for pro-Russian separatists, said Monday.
“The Ukrainian units that are there, they are there forever. They have two options: to surrender or die,” Basurin said.
On Sunday, Zelensky said the latest fighting in Severodonetsk was “very fierce,” adding that Russia was deploying undertrained troops and using its young men as “cannon fodder.”
Russia’s massed artillery in that region gave it a tenfold advantage, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military, Valeriy Zaluzhny, said Sunday.
“Every meter of Ukrainian land there is covered in blood — but not only ours, but also the occupier’s.”
The capture of Severodonetsk would open the road for Moscow to another major city, Kramatorsk, in their steps toward conquering the whole of Donbas, a mainly Russian-speaking region partly held by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.