DNIPRO, Ukraine — Russian forces are menacing a major urban hub in southeastern Ukraine, the country’s president said, even as Ukrainian defenders wage “fierce street fighting” in an eastern city pivotal to the struggle for a larger industrial region that the Kremlin has vowed to seize.
In the fourth month of the Russian invasion, Ukraine redoubled its pleas for more heavy weaponry to parry slow and grinding advances by Moscow’s troops, which are backed by relentless artillery fire, in the contested region known as Donbas, made up of two eastern provinces.
Crucial to that campaign is control of the industrial city of Severodonetsk, one of only two major metropolises in the region that Russia has not yet been able to capture.
Ukrainian officials say Russia is throwing more and more military resources into the fight, and Western military officials said Tuesday that Russian forces are apparently trying to isolate the city by cutting off both northern and southern approaches.
“Russia will almost certainly need to achieve a breakthrough” in the area in order to consolidate tactical gains into “operational level success” in the wider region, British military intelligence said in its latest assessment.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his overnight address to the nation, said Severodonetsk remained hotly contested. “In the city, fierce street fighting continues,” he said.
Zelenskyy also told his compatriots that Russia has set its sights on Zaporizhzhia, a major southeastern city of nearly three-quarters of a million people that is a gateway to central Ukraine. It is the capital of a province of the same name, and has served as an important way station for Ukrainians fleeing from heavily battered or Russian-occupied areas, such as the fallen city of Mariupol.
“We will do everything for the defense” of Zaporizhzhia and its environs, Zelenskyy said.
Along the eastern front lines, civilian suffering has intensified as bombardment rains down on cities, towns and villages in the path of Russia’s military push.
Russian forces have fired on more than 20 populated areas in the Donbas provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, the Ukrainian military said. In an operational report Tuesday, Ukraine’s military General Staff said that, in addition to aiming shellfire at towns and villages, Russia was launching airstrikes on Donetsk.
The Kremlin says it does not deliberately target civilians — which is considered a war crime — but on the ground, mainly elderly residents who have stayed behind face punishing daily barrages that force them to cower in makeshift underground shelters and endure primitive conditions reminiscent of life in pre-industrial times.
“We could never imagine a time where we would have to make fires for cooking,” said Liubov Vedeneeva, a 69-year-old who was chopping wood outside her apartment building in Lysychansk, a city not far from Severodonetsk.
Both lie on the banks of the strategic Seversky Donets River. Zelenskyy described them as “dead cities” after endless waves of Russian bombardment.
Control of the Donbas region is now Moscow’s principal declared war aim, after it failed in the war’s early days to seize the capital, Kyiv, and its forces were pushed away from Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city.
To aid Ukraine in its fight for the region, Britain has said it will supply Ukraine with multiple-launch rocket systems. Ukraine says that is key to knocking out Russian artillery batteries that have been savaging eastern cities and towns.
Russia has warned that it will take unspecified retaliatory measures for delivery of longer-range Western weapons to Ukraine.
Another major Ukrainian aim is to end a Russian blockade of Ukraine’s ports on the Black Sea — a struggle that has worldwide implications because grain exports have been choked off amid the fighting. Zelenskyy said in his address that he has spoken with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about mediating efforts to ease the blockade.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, has cited what he called credible reports of Russian forces pilfering grain stockpiles for attempted sale. The United Nations food agency has repeatedly warned that the Russian invasion could trigger widespread hunger around the world in coming months.
“We need a safety corridor for ships” to enable grain exports, Zelenskyy said in advance of expected talks this week in Ankara, the Turkish capital, to which Moscow, but not Kyiv, will be a party. “Turkey is now finding a format on how to provide us with guarantees.”
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(Bulos reported from Dnipro and King from Washington. Marcus Yam contributed from Lysychansk, Ukraine.)
