Lysychansk is now under Russian control, Kyiv reports. Explosions are also reported from Melitopol. All news about the war in Ukraine can be found here in the ticker.
7:06 p.m .: After weeks of fighting, Ukrainian troops have given up defending the strategically important city of Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine. “In order to protect the lives of the Ukrainian defenders, the decision was made to withdraw,” the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a statement Sunday evening. The Russian Defense Ministry had previously stated that the entire Donbass region of Luhansk had been “liberated” with the capture of the city.
In its statement, the General Staff referred to the numerical and material superiority of the Russian army. “In the conditions of multiple superiority of Russian troops in terms of artillery, air force, missile launch systems, ammunition and personnel, continued defense of the city would have fatal consequences,” it said. 95,000 people once lived in the city.
6 p.m.: According to the authorities, at least six people were killed in a Russian attack on Slovjansk in eastern Ukraine. In addition, 15 people were injured, said a spokeswoman for the Donetsk regional administration, to which Slovyansk belongs. Mayor Wadym Liach spoke of “many dead and injured”.
The city in the Donbass subregion of Donetsk was shelled with multiple rocket launchers on Sunday, the mayor said in a video published on Facebook. It was the most violent attacks “in a long time”. There are 15 fires. According to Ukrainian media reports, among other things, a market was on fire. The spokeswoman for the regional administration renewed the appeal to the people of Slovyansk to leave the city if possible.
Sloviansk is only a few kilometers from the front line and has been under rocket fire for days. Mayor Liach had previously accused Russia of using cluster munitions in the attacks on the city. Cluster munitions are outlawed by international treaties, which Moscow has not signed.
11:58 a.m .: According to their own statements, the Russian army has conquered the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk. According to reports by Russian news agencies, the Ministry of Defense in Moscow said on Sunday that the entire Donbass region of Luhansk had been “liberated”. Lysychansk had been fiercely fought over for days.
Ukraine contradicted the Russian statements. The city is not under full Russian control, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense in Kyiv told the BBC on Sunday. However, the situation has been “very intense” for some time now, with Russian troops constantly attacking the city.
“For Ukrainians, the value of human life is the top priority,” the spokesman continued. “Therefore, sometimes we might withdraw from certain areas in order to retake them in the future.” The Ukrainian ministry spokesman said Donbass is not lost, even if it is “Russia has conquered all of Luhansk. There are other large cities there, especially in Donetsk Oblast, which are under Ukrainian control. These cities have been the target of heavy rocket attacks and artillery shelling in recent days. But the battle for Donbass is not over yet. “
8:52 a.m .: The city of Melitopol in southern Ukraine, occupied by Russian troops, was shaken by dozens of explosions on Sunday night. More than 30 projectiles were fired at one of the four Russian military bases in the city, said the Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fyodorov, on Sunday in a video address distributed on his Telegram channel. The base was thus put out of action. This information cannot be verified independently.
According to Fyodorov, military equipment and several fuel depots were hit. As a result, the explosions continued hours after the attacks. In fact, pictures and videos have appeared on social networks showing clouds of smoke over the city. At the same time, it was announced that entry and exit from the city were blocked. According to Fyodorov, a Russian train was also derailed. This should bring supplies for the Russian occupiers in the city.
7:57 a.m .: According to Ukrainian information, Russian troops have moved into Lysychansk. “In the Donetsk region, the occupiers are concentrating on consolidating their positions in the cities of Lysychansk and Verkhnyokamyanka,” the Ukrainian General Staff said on Sunday. The Ukrainian military governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Hayday, also confirmed on his Telegram channel that the Russians had advanced “and gained a foothold in the Lysychansk district”. It is still unclear whether Ukrainian units are in the city.
On Saturday, the pro-Russian separatists had already announced that they would take Lysychansk. Kyiv replied that the strategically important city was still under its own control. After the fall of Sieverodonetsk, Lysychansk was the last large Ukrainian-controlled place in the Luhansk region.
According to the general staff report, there were also Russian attacks in the direction of Kharkiv and Sloviansk. Russian attacks were repulsed in both directions.
Fighting continues in the direction of Bakhmut, an important transport hub in the Donetsk region. The same applies to Spartak, a suburb of Donetsk that Russian troops are trying to storm.
7:47 p.m .: According to their own statements, pro-Russian separatists, together with Russian soldiers, took control of the city administration building in the heavily contested eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk. That said the separatist representative Andrei Marochko of the Russian agency Interfax on Saturday evening. Similar reports about the strategically important city in the Luhansk region were also made by the Russian news agency Ria Novosti and by the President of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. This information could not be independently verified.
7:20 p.m .: Videos from pro-Russian channels are circulating on Twitter, which are said to show Russian soldiers hoisting a Soviet flag in the embattled city of Lysychansk. The US security expert Michael Horowitz also shared that video on his Twitter channel and explains: “It seems likely that the city has fallen.” His analyzed geodata would also speak for it. However, the situation is unclear.
According to their own statements, pro-Russian separatists have completely surrounded the heavily contested city of Lysychansk in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk. Separatist representative Andrei Marochko told the Russian agency Interfax that “the last strategically important heights” were occupied on Saturday with the help of the Russian army. The President of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, said that Russian troops had already advanced to the center of Lysychansk. This information could not be independently verified.
The Ukrainian side also speaks of fierce fighting, but continues to describe the city as contested. The governor of the Luhansk region Serhiy Hayday said the Russians were trying to storm Lysychansk from different directions.
4:05 p.m .: The Ukrainian army has rejected reports of success from pro-Russian separatists about a complete encirclement of Lysychansk in the east of the country. There is fierce fighting around the city in the Luhansk region, a Ukrainian army spokesman said on television on Saturday. Lysychansk was “not surrounded and still under the control of the Ukrainian army”.
A few hours earlier, pro-Russian fighters in Ukraine announced that they had completely surrounded Lysychansk. Together with Russian troops, “the last strategic hills” were conquered today, a representative of the separatists told the Russian news agency TASS. “With this we can report that Lysychansk is completely encircled.”
Lyssychansk has been hotly contested for days. The neighboring town of Sievjerodonetsk was conquered by Russian troops a week ago after weeks of fighting.
11.04 a.m .: According to British assessments, Russia is increasingly using inaccurate missiles in its attacks in Ukraine. The reason is probably that stocks of modern, accurate weapons are dwindling, the Ministry of Defense said in London on Saturday. Analysis of surveillance recordings showed that the shopping center in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk was very likely hit by a Ch-32 rocket, it said, citing intelligence.
This is a further development of the Soviet rocket Ch-22 (NATO code: AS-4 Kitchen), which is still not optimized for hitting ground targets accurately, especially in cities. “This greatly increases the likelihood of collateral damage when targeting built-up areas,” the ministry said.
Ch-22 missiles are believed to have been used in attacks on the southwestern Ukrainian region of Odessa on June 30. “These weapons are even less accurate and unsuitable for targeted attacks and have almost certainly resulted in repeated civilian casualties in recent weeks,” it said.
10.17 a.m .: According to information from Kyiv, Russia is continuing its attacks on a broad front in eastern Ukraine. In the Kharkiv area, the Russian army is trying to recapture lost positions with the support of artillery, the Ukrainian general staff said on Saturday. Numerous places would be shelled in order to tie down the Ukrainian army there. A Russian attack was repelled in the Donetsk region, it said. Russian air raids were reported from the Avdiivka area. In the Black Sea, on the other hand, Russia continues to block Ukraine’s sea connections.
The information from the combat zones can hardly be checked independently. The Russian war of aggression on the neighboring country has now lasted more than four months.
10.12 a.m .: Russia is said to have used banned cluster munitions in rocket attacks on the city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine, which killed at least four, according to Ukrainian information. During the night of Saturday, civilian areas where there are no military installations were hit, Mayor Wadym Lyach reported on Saturday in the online messenger service Telegram. Four people were killed and seven people were injured.
Cluster munitions are rockets and bombs that burst in mid-air over the target, releasing many small explosive devices. Their use is outlawed under international law. Explosions were also reported from the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv areas on Saturday morning. Details were initially unclear. The information from combat zones can hardly be verified by an independent party. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has now lasted more than four months.
Saturday, July 2, 6:54 a.m.: Ukrainian forces have apparently inflicted another heavy loss on Russia. According to the Ukrainian Operational Command “South”, Ukrainian soldiers have attacked two ammunition dumps in the Kherson region, destroying a Russian-controlled “Forpost” drone worth seven million dollars in the Mykolaiv region.
11:24 a.m .: NATO does not expect the Ukraine war to end anytime soon. That emerges from an internal situation report of the military alliance on Monday, which is available to Business Insider.
Accordingly, the analysts of NATO are of the opinion that “in the Donbass both sides probably need a ceasefire in order to re-equip, regenerate and redefine their mission objectives”. However, the report recognizes that Russia has the military superiority in the fighting in the east of the country – largely because of its artillery. Most recently, Russia had conquered or destroyed many areas in the Donbass; However, a complete capture of eastern Ukraine fails due to the resistance of the Ukrainian armed forces.
According to the situation report, NATO expects this resistance to continue. “The likelihood of the conflict escalating into a less intense war of attrition is increasing,” the letter reads. “Either side, without significant reinforcements, has an advantage large enough to decide the conflict militarily in the near future.”
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
