Pro-Russian separatist troops reportedly took control of the town of Lyman on Friday night. If the information remained a little confused, the soldiers of the Republic of Donetsk, largely supported by the army of Moscow, seemed to have entered this small town in eastern Donbass. Lyman, an important railway junction, one of the targets for several weeks of Moscow’s slow offensive.
The town is also a gateway to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, to the southeast, two cities in Donbass still in the hands of kyiv. Donetsk region governor Pavlo Kyrylenko confirmed that Lyman was “mainly Russian controlled” but that Ukrainian troops had retreated “to new fortified positions in the vicinity”. However, according to a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, kyiv forces are still fighting in parts of the city to “stop Russian attempts” to push their offensive towards Sloviansk.
This attack demonstrates, for Oleksiy Arestovych, the Ukrainian president’s defense adviser, that “the Russian army has improved its tactics and its chain of command”. Troops from Moscow also continue to slowly gain ground around Sieverodonetsk and its twin city of Lysychansk, which are increasingly threatened with encirclement. According to a local elected official, Sieverodonetsk is thus almost completely destroyed while Lyssytchansk is under artillery fire. Since the beginning of the week, the main access and exit roads to the cities, which had 200,000 inhabitants before the war, have also been under Russian fire, making the evacuation or reinforcement of Ukrainian positions very difficult. difficult.
