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.
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.
9:15 p.m .: According to the Ukrainian general staff, the Russian army is pulling together strong forces for an attack on the city of Sloviansk in the Donbass. The Ukrainian military spoke of up to 20 Russian battalion tactical groups (BTG) on Facebook on Friday evening. These are combat units with armored infantry, artillery and anti-aircraft defenses, numbering 600 to 800 soldiers.
Sloviansk is part of the eastern Ukrainian administrative region of Donetsk, whose complete conquest Russia has taken up in the 100-day war. The city is also in the rear of Sievjerodonetsk in the Luhansk region, which has been contested for days.
The military information was initially not independently verifiable. In Sieverodonetsk, the enemy continued to advance under cover of heavy artillery fire in the residential areas, but had only partial success, the report said. The Russian side has announced that it has almost complete control of the city. On the other hand, the Ukrainian regional administration reported that the Ukrainian army had regained a fifth of the city with counterattacks.
7:34 p.m .: Two journalists from the Reuters news agency were slightly injured in eastern Ukraine and their driver was killed. The group was on its way to Sieverodonetsk for a report when they came under fire, a Reuters spokesman said on Friday. According to the report, the journalists were traveling in a vehicle provided by pro-Russian separatists, “which was driven by a driver provided by the separatists”.
The news agency initially did not provide any further information on the identity of the journalists, their state of health or the circumstances of the attack. According to a count by Reporters Without Borders, at least eight journalists have been killed in the pursuit of their profession since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24. A 32-year-old French television journalist died on Monday – according to information from Paris, by Russian fire.
4:34 p.m .: After the Russian capture of the port city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine, the expelled mayor Wadym Boitschenko accused the leadership in Moscow of taking the people who remained there hostage. There are still about 100,000 residents in Mariupol. “They are being held there by Russian troops and used practically as human shields,” Boichenko said in Kiev on Friday. Residents could not flee to territory controlled by Ukraine. Rather, the Russians wanted to keep the civilians in the city to make a liberation offensive in Ukraine more difficult.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Kyiv is waiting for weapons from the West to liberate its territories. However, the lives of many people should not be endangered. Mayor Boichenko said Mariupol will not be abandoned even though the city is 95 percent destroyed.
Russia is a “terrorist state” that forces those who remain in the city, which was once inhabited by almost 500,000 people, to accept Russian passports – “rags of shame”. Boichenko also said that more than 20,000 people were killed in the fighting for Mariupol. “That’s twice as many as in World War II under German occupation. It is the biggest bloodshed in Mariupol’s history,” he said. The information could not be independently verified.
The smell of corpses and the risk of infection are spreading throughout the city because the dead have only been superficially buried in front gardens or backyards. In view of the summer heat and the destroyed municipal infrastructure such as power and sewage pipes and waste disposal, the situation is becoming increasingly worse. “The stench of death makes it difficult to breathe.”
Boitschenko accused the “racists”, as he calls the Russian occupiers, of using the methods of the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Hundreds of war crimes were recorded. The city has been closed since mid-April. Several aid centers should be set up in the country for people who fled from the Russian occupation.
4:44 p.m .: 100 days after the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the Kremlin has emphasized the continuation of the “military special operation” until all objectives have been achieved. Some results have already been achieved, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, according to the Interfax agency. One goal is complete control over the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
With Moscow’s help, pro-Russian separatists had taken large parts of the regions there, including the city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea. The Russian troops are also occupying the Cherson region in southern Ukraine. Ukrainian “nationalist elements” and “pro-Nazi forces” have been pushed out of numerous places. The places now transitioned to peaceful life, Peskow said.
“This work will continue until the moment when all objectives of the military operation are achieved,” Peskov said. In Ukraine, on the other hand, numerous politicians emphasized that Russia had brought nothing but destruction and death in the first 100 days of the war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the day before that Russia currently occupies around 20 percent of Ukrainian territory.
11:37 a.m.: A phone call intercepted by Ukraine’s main intelligence directorate gives an insight into the state of the Russian armed forces. In it, soldiers of the Donetsk People’s Republic complain that physically unfit people have been forced into service because they don’t want to go to the front voluntarily. In addition, the units would suffer from general disorder and mass intoxication, i.e. they would be drunk all the time.
The rotation of the armed forces is also difficult. Odessa military administration spokesman Maksym Marchenko said that 30 to 40 percent of Russian personnel who left Ukraine refused to return. This forced Russian commanders to send unprepared and unmotivated units into battle on their behalf.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
