Moscow has put all its strength in the battle, after its failures in the north of the country, and aims at the conquest of the last territories of the regions of Louhansk and Donetsk still under Ukrainian control.
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Rare vehicles covered with earth and dust rushes on the road to desolation, waving on the asphalt between the impacts of rockets and the cut electric cables. Some burned heads still venture, under an intense Russian artillery fire, towards Sievierodonetsk, without being sure to achieve it. Classic military convoys will no longer strengthen the front, and civilians can no longer, at that time, run away. At the head of a unit of three vans and two ambulances, an officer has just back up the mobile rescue post to the suburbs of Bakhmout. In the distance, the sound of cannons is incessant. Steel thunderstorms fall on the Donbass campaigns.
In the streets of Bakhmout, fighters come to blow an hour or two before leaving for the front. Rue Gorbatova, a counter is still used chawarmas, burgers and hot dogs. Special forces who study the fighting map on an electronic table, young volunteers come from everywhere to strengthen the defenses of Donbass there, and even some old veterans of the Soviet army, one of which has known the Afghanistan War, having regained service against Moscow. A column of tanks goes up rue Gorbatova, a German shepherd wedged on its hinged legs on a turret, shuddering muzzle in the wind, the imperial air.
around Kramatorsk, the “de facto capital” of what remains of the two regions of Donbass ( Donetsk and Louhansk) still under Ukrainian control, the Russian army progresses in Lyman to the north, in Sievierodonetsk in the east, and towards Bakhmout to the southeast. The current objective of the Russian army is to complete the conquest of the Louhansk region, including Sievierodonetsk and its twin city Lyssytchansk are the last bastions, then of the Donetsk region.
In this war triggered by Russia against Ukraine on February 24, the Russian offensive in Donbass really started just over a month ago, April 18, once Moscow acted the ‘Failure of its assaults, in the north of the country, against the two main cities of Ukraine, the capital, kyiv, then Kharkiv.
“The situation empires every day”
While the Ukrainian political leaders of Donbass are refugees either in Kramatorsk, or further in Dnipro, Serhi Haïdaï, the leader of the Military Administration of the Louhansk region, who had to evacuate Sievierodonetsk, remains for the moment Bakhmout, the bridgehead. Dressed in a bulletproof vest where his war name is displayed, “Ronin”, he moves in a trivialized van with two bodyguards. The Governor in Exile meets a park. “The Russians are destroying Sievierodonetsk as they destroyed Marioupol, reports Serhi Haïdaï. Building by building, house by house.”
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