Russia has continued the fight for Sieverodonetsk with new reserves. In many other places their attacks were unsuccessful. All news about the attack on Ukraine can be found here in the ticker.
6:06 p.m .: According to authorities in Kyiv, Ukraine and Russia handed over the bodies of 160 soldiers to the other side. The exchange took place on June 2 along the front line in the Zaporizhia region, the Ukrainian Ministry for the Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories said in Kyiv on Saturday. Ukraine has repeatedly called on Russia to accept the dead soldiers and accused the leadership in Moscow of treating its own armed forces like “cannon fodder” and not caring about a dignified burial.
Ukrainian secret services and the General Staff of the Armed Forces as well as other security structures were involved in the exchange, it said. According to Ukrainian information, negotiations on the exchange of prisoners of war are still ongoing on both sides. Thousands of Ukrainian fighters are in Russian violence, including the defenders of Mariupol, who held out at the Azovstal steelworks there until Kyiv ceded the city in May.
5:33 p.m .: Russia has reported the withdrawal of Ukrainian soldiers from the embattled city of Sievjerodonetsk in eastern Ukraine. “Some units of the Ukrainian army, which suffered heavy casualties (in some units up to 90 percent) in the fighting for Sieverodonetsk, are withdrawing towards Lysychansk,” the Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Saturday. The statement did not reveal how many soldiers are said to have left the city. The information could not initially be independently verified.
4:28 p.m .: According to Ukrainian information, the Ukrainian armed forces have had small successes in defending the strategically important city of Sievjerodonetsk in the east of the country. Russia is throwing its “full weight and its reserves” into the battle for the city, said the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Gajday, on Saturday. However, the Ukrainian forces “are now pushing them back”. Meanwhile, a Ukrainian volunteer brigade reported the death of a German fighter in its ranks.
According to Governor Gajdaj, the Russian forces managed to occupy “most of the city”. Gajdaj said on Friday that Ukrainian forces had recaptured a fifth of the city. Sieverodonetsk is the largest city in the Luhansk region still under Ukrainian control. Fighting is going on in the city’s industrial area, and the “street fighting” in the city is continuing, the Ukrainian presidency also said. Russia wants to occupy the entire, economically important Donbass region in eastern Ukraine.
3:39 p.m .: According to Ukrainian information, a German fighter was killed in the fighting against Russian troops in Ukraine. A total of four foreign volunteers who fought on Ukraine’s side were killed, a volunteer brigade called the International Defense Legion of Ukraine said on Saturday. In addition to the German, three men from the Netherlands, France and Australia were killed.
The volunteer brigade did not provide any information on the circumstances of the death of the four foreign fighters or the location. It said only, “We lost our brothers in battle, but their bravery, memory and legacy will inspire us forever.” The statement was accompanied by photographs of the men in battle fatigues and carrying light weapons.
According to the organization, citizens of many countries are fighting on the side of Ukraine, including Denmark, Israel, Poland, Croatia and Great Britain. Shortly after the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine began, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the formation of an international brigade of volunteers at the end of February. According to Ukrainian information, around 20,000 volunteers from all over the world then volunteered. Russia this week said it had killed “hundreds” of foreign fighters in Ukraine.
11:45 a.m .: According to a recent report by British intelligence, the Russian Air Force is very active in Donbass. Accordingly, it would regularly carry out airstrikes in the region, with both targeted and untargeted attacks. Having failed in the attempted capture of Kiev, the air force is now one of the main factors in the Russian army’s progress in eastern Ukraine.
Russia has managed to acquire more air support, according to the secret service. In addition, more and more untargeted blows would cause widespread destruction. The secret service assumes “substantial collateral damage” and many civilian casualties.
11:38 a.m .: According to the Russian military, it has hit a center for training artillerymen in western weapons technology. “High-precision air-to-surface missiles struck an artillery training center of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Stetskivka area of the Sumy region,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday. At the center, soldiers were taught how to use the Western M777 howitzer, he added.
Moscow has been criticizing Western arms deliveries to Ukraine for months. According to the Kremlin, the war would have ended without the armaments aid. In order to reduce this aid, the Russian leadership emphasizes the destruction of Western weapons and volunteers. Konashenkov also said on Saturday that “a camp of foreign mercenaries” had been destroyed by a rocket hit in the Odessa region in southern Ukraine.
11.15 a.m .: In the strategically important city of Sievjerodonetsk in eastern Ukraine, the defenders say they have pushed back the Russian forces somewhat. If the Russian soldiers had previously controlled “about 70 percent” of the city, “they have now been pushed back by 20 percent,” said the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Gajday, on Friday evening. He described a brutal back and forth.
Russian forces “bomb our positions for hours, then they send in a company of freshly mobilized soldiers, they die, then they realize there are still pockets of resistance and they start bombing again,” Gajdaj said. That’s how it works in the fourth month of the Russian invasion.
8:25 a.m .: In the battle for the city of Sievjerodonetsk in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, Russia continued the attacks, according to Ukrainian information, with the help of fresh reserves. “The enemy, with artillery support, is conducting assault operations in the village of Sieverodonetsk, has strengthened its grouping with the mobile reserve of the 2nd army corps, fighting in the city is ongoing,” the Ukrainian General Staff said in its situation report on Saturday.
Russian attacks on the Ustynowka suburb were just as unsuccessful as an attempted ground offensive in the Bakhmut area, the General Staff reported. The Russian attacks are aimed at cutting off supplies and encircling the Ukrainian troops in Sieverodonetsk.
According to the Ukrainian General Staff, the Russian attacks in the direction of Sloviansk during the night were also unsuccessful. Attempts to storm were repulsed in the villages of Bogorodychne and Wirnopillja, and the Russians suffered casualties. The Sloviansk metropolitan area, with a population of about half a million before the war, is another key target of Russian attacks in Donbass. There is the headquarters of the Ukrainian defense forces in the region.
In a current situation assessment, the military experts of the American Institute for the Study of the War (ISW) announced that the Russians had assembled around 20 tactical battalions in the Izyum area for an advance on Sloviansk. However, it is unlikely that the Russian troops will make any substantial progress there in the next few days.
7:24 a.m .: The Ukrainian presidential administration predicts that the Russian war of aggression can last up to six months. “It can take another two to six months,” said Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak in an interview with the opposition Russian online portal “Medusa” on Friday evening, with a view to the possible duration of the war. In the end it depends on how the mood in the societies of Europe, Ukraine and Russia changes.
There will only be negotiations when the situation on the battlefield changes and Russia no longer feels that it can dictate the terms, Podoljak said. He once again warned against territorial concessions to Russia. That won’t end the war. “Because it is fundamental for the Russian Federation – and Mr. (Vladimir) Putin said this several times – that the mere existence of Ukrainian statehood is harmful.” The Russian advance is therefore less aimed at conquering specific areas than at destroying Ukraine per se.
Podoliak estimated Russian losses at a total of 80,000 people. The dead and wounded in the regular army, the separatists and the mercenary group “Wagner”. However, he conceded that after a catastrophic initial phase of the war for Moscow with up to 1,000 war casualties per day, the current losses of Russian and Ukrainian troops are “comparable”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently put his own losses at up to 100 dead and 500 injured every day.
Saturday, June 4, 5:30 a.m.: In the strategically important city of Sievjerodonetsk in eastern Ukraine, the defenders say they have pushed back the Russian forces somewhat. If the Russian soldiers had previously controlled “about 70 percent” of the city, “they have now been pushed back by 20 percent,” said the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Gajday, on Friday evening. He described a brutal back and forth.
Russian forces “bomb our positions for hours, then they send in a company of freshly mobilized soldiers, they die, then they realize there are still pockets of resistance and they start bombing again,” Gajdaj said. That’s how it works in the fourth month of the Russian invasion.
Kyiv accuses Moscow of turning Ukraine’s last remaining bastion in Luhansk into a “second Mariupol”. The port city on the Sea of Azov had been under siege for weeks and was largely destroyed.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said on Friday that the “occupying powers” had “almost reduced the city to rubble.” The result after a hundred days of war was “more than 22,000 civilians killed, 1,300 destroyed buildings and 47,000 people deported to Russia or to the areas controlled by the pro-Russian separatists,” he said.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
