Street fighting rages in Ukraine's Sievierodonetsk, says governor

KYIV: Fighting raged on the streets of Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine on Thursday and Russian forces were destroying “everything that can be used for defence”, the regional governor said.

Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said Russia was shelling areas of the city that are still controlled by Ukraine but that Ukrainian forces would be able to “clean up” in the city once they received long-range artillery.

The battle for Sievierodonetsk is brutal and will determine the fate of the Donbas region, Ukraine’s president earlier said, as Russian troops lay waste to the city in an assault aimed at controlling eastern Ukraine.

After failing to take control of the capital Kyiv, the Kremlin says it is now seeking to completely “liberate” the Donbas, where Russian-backed separatists broke away from Ukrainian government control in 2014.

Around a third of the Donbas was held by the separatists before the Feb. 24 invasion.

“This is a very brutal battle, very tough, perhaps one of the most difficult throughout this war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video statement on Wednesday.

“Sievierodonetsk remains the epicentre of the encounter in Donbas … Largely, that is where the fate of our Donbas is being decided now,” he added.