The Russian-battered eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk appeared to be on the brink of becoming another Mariupol on Monday as the mayor told The Associated Press that Russian troops have entered, power and communications have been cut and "the city has been completely ruined."
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Moscow seeks to capture all of Ukraine's industrial Donbas region, and Sievierodonetsk is key to that. Fierce street fighting is underway in the city as Ukrainian defenders are trying to push the Russians out, Mayor Oleksandr Striuk told the AP in a phone interview. Russian troops have advanced a few blocks toward the city center, he said.
"The number of victims is rising every hour, but we are unable to count the dead and the wounded amid the street fighting," the mayor added. He said 12,000-13,000 civilians left in the city that once held more than 100,000 are sheltering in basements and bunkers to escape the Russian bombardment.
Russian forces stormed Sievierodonetsk after trying unsuccessfully to encircle it, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described the situation as "indescribably difficult." A Russian artillery barrage has destroyed critical infrastructure and damaged 90% of buildings. The mayor has estimated that 1,500 civilians in the city have died since the war began, from Russian attacks as well as from a lack of medicine or treatment.
Sievierodonetsk, 143 kilometers (89 miles) south of the Russian border, has emerged in recent days as the epicenter of the Donbas fighting. Mariupol is the city on the Sea of Azov that spent nearly three months under Russian siege before the last Ukrainian fighters surrendered.
The Ukrainian military said Russian forces were reinforcing their positions on the northeastern and southeastern outskirts of Sievierodonetsk and bringing additional equipment and ammunition to press their offensive.
Luhansk regional Gov. Serhiy Haidai said the Russians also are pushing toward nearby Lysychansk. He said two civilians were killed and another five were wounded in the latest Russian shelling in the war.
Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk span the strategically important Siverskiy Donetsk River. They are the last major areas under Ukrainian control in Luhansk, which makes up the Donbas together with the adjacent Donetsk region.
On Sunday, Zelenskyy visited the country's war-ridden east for the first time since the Russian invasion, on a trip to the Kharkiv region, from where Moscow retreated.
Zelenskyy's office posted a video on Telegram of him wearing a bulletproof vest and being shown heavily destroyed buildings in Kharkiv and its surroundings.
The Ukrainian leader later said he fired the local head of the SBU security service on the trip for not working to "defend" the city.
"I came, figured out, and fired the head of the Security Service of Ukraine of the (Kharkiv) region for the fact that he did not work on the defense of the city from the first days of the full-scale war, but thought only about himself," Zelenskyy said in his daily national address.
His office said 2,229 buildings were destroyed in Kharkiv and the region.
"We will restore, rebuild, and bring back life. In Kharkiv and all other towns and villages where evil came," it said on his Telegram account.
In the video, Ukrainian soldiers showed Zelenskyy destroyed trucks on the side of a road going through a field.
"In this war, the occupiers are trying to squeeze out at least some result," Zelenskyy said in a later post.
"But they should have understood long ago that we will defend our land to the last man."
He also met local officials – the governor of the Kharkiv region and the mayor of the city – to discuss reconstruction programs for the region.
He called on them to "find cool projects" to rebuild destroyed areas and "have a new face."
On Monday, top European Union diplomats met for a last-ditch attempt to agree on Russian oil import sanctions before their leaders meet later in the day, seeking to avoid a display of disunity over the bloc's response to the war in Ukraine.
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According to a new draft of the summit conclusions, the 27 leaders should agree that their next round of sanctions will cover oil with a temporary exemption for crude delivered by pipeline, a compromise that ambassadors had failed to agree on Sunday.
The text seen by Reuters, which might yet be revised again, would confirm an agreement on seaborne oil sanctions, with pipeline oil supplied to landlocked Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to be sanctioned at some point.
However, the leaders gathering in Brussels in the afternoon would not finalize the terms for that temporary exception, the text suggested.
Instead, they will ask diplomats and ministers to find a solution that would also ensure fair competition between those still getting Russian oil and those cut off.
One EU diplomat said it represented "limited progress", with too many details still to be determined for a full agreement at the two-day summit, where leaders will have few concrete results if the impasse over an oil embargo holds up a wider package of sanctions on the table.
The EU leaders will declare continued support for Ukraine to help it fend off Russia's assault and they will discuss how to deal with the impact of the conflict, especially the spike in energy prices and an impending food supply crisis.
However, the talks will be overshadowed by their month-long struggle to agree on a sixth round of sanctions against Moscow, notably held up by Hungary.
"After Russia's attack on Ukraine, we saw what can happen when Europe stands united," German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Sunday. "With a view to the summit tomorrow, let's hope it continues like this. But it is already starting to crumble and crumble again." Read full story
Other elements of the latest package of sanctions include cutting Russia's biggest bank, Sberbank SBMX.MM, from the SWIFT messaging system, banning Russian broadcasters from the EU and adding more people to a list whose assets are frozen.
The most tangible outcome of the summit will be agreement on a package of EU loans worth 9 billion euro ($9.7 billion), with a small grants component to cover part of the interest, for Ukraine to keep its government going and pay wages for about two months.
A decision on how to raise the money will be made later.
According to a draft of the summit conclusions seen by Reuters, leaders will also back the creation of an international fund to rebuild Ukraine after the war, with details to be decided later, and will touch on the legally fraught question of confiscating frozen Russian assets for that purpose.
The leaders will pledge to accelerate work to help Ukraine move its grain out of the country to global buyers via rail and truck as the Russian navy is blocking the usual sea routes and to take steps to faster become independent of Russian energy.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
