Russia has said it has decided to withdraw from Ukraine’s southwestern coast as a “gesture of goodwill” to show that Moscow is not hampering UN efforts to open a humanitarian corridor to allow grain from Ukraine can not be shipped.
Ukraine said it had driven out Russian forces after an artillery and missile attack overnight.
“KABOOM!” tweeted Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff. “No more Russian troops on Snake Island. Our Army has done a great job.”
In contrast, a Ukrainian official in the heavy-fighting eastern province of Luhansk on Thursday described problems for Ukrainian forces in the city of Lysychansk.
Russian artillery fired from different directions as the Russian army approached from different directions, regional governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Ukrainian television.
“Residents have been told to stay indefinitely in underground shelters as it is very dangerous,” Gaidai said.
An official of the pro-Russian separatist administration in Luhansk province told the RIA news agency the Lysychansk oil refinery is now fully controlled by Russian and pro-Russian forces, and all roads to Lysychansk are also under their control. . Ukraine says the main road out is largely impassable due to fighting, but the city has not yet been completely cut off.
RUSSIAN FIREPLACE
Russian forces have been trying to encircle Lysychansk since capturing Sievierodonetsk, on the other side of the Siverskyi Donets River, last week after weeks of heavy fighting.
Russia has focused its firepower on the conquest of cities and towns in the Donbas region, which consists of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces on the border with Russia.
Despite giving up land and punishing losses in the Donbas in recent weeks, Ukraine hopes to inflict enough damage to deplete Russia’s advancing army. Ukrainian forces carried out a counter-attack in the south of the region.
Gaidai cited Russia’s overwhelming advantage in equipment and artillery in the battle for Lysychansk. Ukraine’s Western allies sent weapons and the Kyiv government got another boost with the United States saying it would provide a further $ 800 million in weapons and military aid.
Speaking after a NATO summit in Madrid, US President Joe Biden said Washington and its allies had united to stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I do not know how it will end, but it will not end with Russia defeating Ukraine,” Biden told a news conference. “We are going to support Ukraine as long as it takes.”
During a visit to Russia’s foreign intelligence agency (SVR) on Thursday, Putin said one of SVR’s main tasks is to obtain timely information on foreign military and geostrategic plans that could threaten Russia, according to the Interfax news agency.
SMOKE AND FIRE
Snake Island was recaptured by Ukraine after weeks in which momentum in the four-month-old conflict apparently shifted in Russia’s favor.
The Ukrainian army posted a picture on Facebook of what appeared to be the island, seen from the sky, with several columns of black smoke rising above it.
“The enemy hastily evacuated the remains of the garrison with two speedboats and is likely to leave the island. Currently, Snake Island is being consumed by fire, explosions are erupting,” it said.
Ukrainian Brigadier General Oleksii Hromov said Ukrainian forces were not yet occupying the island but would do so.
The rocky protrusion overlooks sea roads to Odessa, Ukraine’s main Black Sea port, where Russia is blocking food cargo from one of the world’s leading grain suppliers.
Snake Island caught the world’s attention after Russia seized it on the first day of the war. A Ukrainian guard, ordered by Russia’s flagship cruiser Moscow to surrender, returned “Russian warship: go fuck yourself”.
The lifting of the blockade was a primary goal of the West. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of deliberately causing world hunger as “extortion”.
Moscow denies blocking the and blames food shortages on Western sanctions it says restrict its exports to its own ports.
“We do not prevent the export of Ukrainian grain. The Ukrainian army has exploited the approaches to their ports; no one is preventing them from cleaning those mines and we guarantee the safety of shipping grain from there,” Putin said on Thursday.
Several military experts said expelling the Russians from Snake Island would not in itself be enough to unblock the ports.
“Does that mean the grain is flowing all of a sudden? No, it really does not,” said Marcus Faulkner, a lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London.
Russia has been defending the island since February, despite the fact that Ukraine has claimed serious damage, sunk supply vessels and destroyed Russian strongholds.
New weapons sent by the West have made the Russian garrison even more vulnerable, especially HIMARS, a rocket system provided by the United States that Ukraine began drafting last week. Russia’s departure from the island was “probably a tangible consequence of NATO arms deliveries to Ukraine,” said Rob Lee of the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute.