Situation in Donbas \u2018even worse than people say it is\u2019, says Ukraine\u2019s foreign minister, as Kremlin makes further gains
\nDonbas
\nThe besieged Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk appears to be almost completely surrounded by attacking Russian forces, as the Kremlin continued to make incremental gains in its offensive in the Donbas region, backed by withering shell fire.
\n\u201cThe Russians are pounding residential neighbourhoods relentlessly,\u201d regional governor, Serhiy Haidai, wrote in a Telegram post on Friday. \u201cThe residents of Sievierodonetsk have forgotten when was the last time there was silence in the city for at least half an hour.\u201d
\nAs the cities of Kharkiv to the north and Dnipro to the south also came under attack, analysts said the main Russian effort appeared still to be focused to the east, while Russian attacks elsewhere appeared to be aimed at consolidating their positions and tying down Ukrainian defenders who could otherwise be redeployed.
\nUnderlining the state of the fighting in Donbas, the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, who has cast himself as one of Ukraine\u2019s most vocal cheerleaders, said Russia was making slow but \u201cpalpable progress\u201d, as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, accused the Kremlin of carrying out a \u201cgenocide\u201d in the country\u2019s east.
\nUkraine\u2019s foreign minister also offered a bleak assessment. \u201cThe military situation in eastern Ukraine is even worse than people say it is and the country needs heavy weapons now to effectively fight Russia,\u201d Dmytro Kuleba said.
\nHis comments came as the US and its allies indicated they would provide Ukraine with increasingly sophisticated weapons, including the multiple-launch rocket systems Kyiv for which has been appealing.
\nOn Friday, the British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said in Prague that it was appropriate to support Ukraine with tanks and planes if necessary.
\nAmid the increasingly gloomy news from the campaign in the east, where Ukrainian defenders have been forced to retreat from some positions, Zelenskiy said on Friday that Ukraine was not eager to talk to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, but that it had to face the reality that this would probably be necessary to end the war.
\n\u201cThere are things to discuss with the Russian leader. I\u2019m not telling you that to me our people are eager to talk to him, but we have to face the realities of what we are living through,\u201d Zelenskiy said in an address to an Indonesian thinktank.
\n\u201cWhat do we want from this meeting? \u2026 We want our lives back \u2026 We want to reclaim the life of a sovereign country within its own territory,\u201d he said, adding that Russia did not appear to be ready yet for serious peace talks.
\nIn reply, the Kremlin said on Friday it blamed Ukraine for the fact that peace talks between the two countries were frozen, saying it was unclear what Kyiv wanted.
\nThe Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said in a call with reporters: \u201cThe Ukrainian leadership constantly makes contradictory statements. This does not allow us to fully understand what the Ukrainian side wants.\u201d
\nThe situation in Sievierodonetsk appeared particularly desperate, with Russian troops reported in some parts of the city.
\nIts mayor said Russian forces were in the Myr hotel on Thursday, on the city\u2019s outskirts, and that 1,500 people had died in the fighting, while between 12,000 and 13,000 were trapped.
\nRussia appeared to have gained full control of the strategic town of Lyman, with the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, saying there was heavy fighting around the city after Ukrainian troops withdrew to a new line of defence.
\nPro-Russia separatists in the Donetsk region said they had \u201cliberated and taken full control of 220 settlements, including Krasny Liman\u201d, using an old name for Lyman.
\nAccording to some reports, Ukraine has been increasingly forced to plug the gaps among its defenders in Donbas with volunteers, highlighting the increasing stress on its forces in the region.
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\nOleh Synehubov, the regional governor of Kharkiv, which lies to the north of Donbas, said nine civilians had been killed in Russian shelling on Thursday.
\nA five-month-old child and her father were among the dead, while her mother was gravely wounded, he said on social media channels.
\nAn Agence France-Presse reporter in the city said the northern residential district of Pavlove Pole was hit and plumes of smoke rose from the area.
\nThe journalist saw several people wounded near a shuttered shopping centre, while an elderly man with injuries to his arm and leg was carried away by medics.
\nCommentators believe that Russia\u2019s gains in the three months of war have been far more paltry than Putin originally hoped for, although Moscow has gained control over a handful of cities in southern Ukraine, such as Kherson and Mariupol.
\nThat has been cited as the explanation for the intensity of the Russian effort to take the entirety of Donbas, in what could be painted as a major victory for Putin.
\nThe Kremlin is seeking to tighten its grip over the parts of Ukraine it occupies, including fast-tracking citizenship for residents of areas under Russian control.
\nThe occupying authorities in Mariupol, which was taken over by invading forces this month after a devastating siege that left thousands dead and reduced the city to rubble, have cancelled school holidays to prepare students to switch to a Russian curriculum, according to Kyiv.
\nWhether Russian forces can advance beyond Donbas and the areas in the south they control is more questionable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Situation in Donbas \u2018even worse than people say it is\u2019, says Ukraine\u2019s foreign minister, as Kremlin makes further gains Donbas The besieged Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk appears to be almost completely surrounded by attacking Russian forces, as the Kremlin continued to make incremental gains in its offensive in the Donbas region, backed by withering shell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263156,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[7850,4641,7851],"class_list":{"0":"post-263125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-eastern-ukraine","9":"tag-russian-forces","10":"tag-sievierodonetsk"},"yoast_head":"\n