Day 53 in the war: According to Ukrainian sources, the Russian army has launched a major attack in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk. In the small town of Kreminna, the Russian army “marched in with a huge amount of war material” on Monday night, said the Ukrainian governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Hajdaj, on Monday on Facebook. “Our defenders have retreated to new positions,” he added. Attacks in Kharkiv killed three.
The governor previously reported that Russian forces had advanced as far as Kreminna. “The enemy was able to advance as far as Kreminna during the night, but he couldn’t establish himself there. Fighting continues directly in the city,” it said. The governor said four civilians were shot while trying to escape from Kreminna. They wanted to flee the city in their car.
The small town of Kreminna with 18,000 inhabitants is located around 50 kilometers north-east of the city of Kramatorsk and near the currently heavily contested town of Rubishne. Reporters from the AFP news agency reported on Monday about violent explosions in Rubishne, some of which caused fires. Huge clouds of smoke rose above the city. Ukrainian soldiers fired artillery and mortar shells at Russian positions in Rubishne from Novodrushesk, about three kilometers away.
The head of the pro-Russian separatists in Luhansk, Lenoid Pasechnik, said last week that the Ukrainian army still controls “a part” of Rubishne. As soon as his fighters “liberated” the entire area, a decision would be made “to provide help to our brothers in Donetsk and possibly to Russia,” Pasechnik said.
Air raids on a broad front
Easter Monday began in Ukraine with Russian air raids on a broad front: the capital Kyiv was again under fire. But Dnipropetrovsk on the Dnipro River and the western Ukrainian city of Lviv (Lemberg), to which many people have fled, were also attacked from the air. The mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovy, wrote on his Facebook page of “five targeted rocket attacks” against the city, where at least six people, including a child, are said to have died. According to the Russian armed forces, during the night more than Fired 100 targets.
A resident of south-west Lviv told the AFP news agency that he had seen thick clouds of gray smoke rising from behind residential buildings. “Russians continue barbaric aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities,” wrote Mykhailo Podoliak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on Twitter.
According to the head of the Ukrainian railway company, Alexander Kamyshin, the attack also damaged railway infrastructure. He shared a photo online showing fire and smoke over a small building next to a railway track. According to him, no passengers or railway employees were injured in the attack.
However, there could be numerous civilian casualties when the Russian army is expected to storm the Mariupol Steelworks held by the defenders. The Azovstal site has become a place of refuge for “many civilians,” said Mariupol police chief Mikhail Vershynin on Sunday evening, according to a report by the Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform. Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again pushed for rapid arms deliveries.
Vershynin told local Mariupol TV that there are still 100,000 civilians in the city. They were used by the invaders “to clear debris and pick up corpses”. In this way, the Russian army wants to remove the traces of its crimes. In addition, all residents of the city are forced to wear white ribbons on their left arms and right legs. But all soldiers would also have the same ribbons, with which the civilians are “deliberately turned into combatants”.