Flee the front line, Ukrainians told as key city falls

The Ukrainian authorities pleaded with residents to flee the city of Slovyansk after intense shelling from Russian rocket launchers killed “many” civilians, hours after Moscow’s troops declared victory over Lysychansk yesterday.

The artillery assault on Slovyansk, to which many of the troops previously defending Lysychansk have now retreated, set ablaze a market and struck residential buildings, killing at least six and wounding dozens more.

Slovyansk and its sister city Kramatorsk lie in the path of Russian forces after they moved unopposed into Lysychansk, the last city in Luhansk province still in Ukrainian hands. Russia said it was a step closer to its “absolute priority” of taking the entire Donbas region.

In a statement Ukraine’s military said the withdrawal was necessary to preserve life and troops as “the continuation of the defence of the city would lead to fatal consequences” in the face of Russia’s superiority in numbers and equipment.

It added: “In order to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders, a decision was made to withdraw. Unfortunately, steel will and patriotism are not enough for success — materiel and technical resources are needed.”

In an address late last night, President Zelensky said Kyiv would retake the lost ground but told western allies his military needed “the most modern weapons”.

“It requires many negotiations, but we will ensure such a supply. Ukraine will reach the level when the fire superiority of the occupiers will be levelled,” he said.

The fall of Lysychansk sets the scene for a looming battle for control of Slovyansk, the first since it was occupied by Russian proxy fighters in 2014 when Moscow fomented a separatist conflict in the Ukrainian provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, which make up the eastern Donbas region.

Tetyana Ignachenko, a spokeswoman for Donetsk province, urged residents to leave while they could to avoid being wounded in the shelling or trapped by a shifting front line.

On Thursday she told The Times of her fears that the fall of Lysychansk and with it Luhansk province would open the way for an emboldened assault on Donetsk, endangering civilians.

“We have learnt the lesson of Mariupol, that people need to get out before it is too late,” she said of the southern port city captured by the Russians after it was besieged and shelled, killing thousands of civilians. “Trains left Mariupol empty when they could have taken three or four thousand. We cannot let something like that happen again.”

In the past few days there has been a surge in wounded civilians being brought from Lysychansk by the military to Kramatorsk’s main hospital for onward evacuation, giving the city a taste of what could await them if civilians do not leave. The Russian advance in Donbas has been enabled by intense and imprecise shelling, preceding the advance of tanks.

“Lysychansk was like hell but Slovyansk and Kramatorsk will be worse,” an infantry commander said. “How can we stop the Russians when we cannot hope to match their artillery?” The destruction caused by Russian shelling in places such as Lysychansk and Severodonetsk is devastating. “There’s only names on a map left, not actual towns and cities,” Ignachenko said.

Valentina, 70, who disregarded an earlier appeal to leave Lysychansk, was rescued by soldiers after she was struck by Russian shelling outside her home. Cut off from electricity, gas and water, those remaining in Lysychansk were forced to come outside their buildings to cook food over open fires.

“They saved my arm with a tourniquet,” she said from her hospital bed, showing an arm’s length of bloodied bandaging. Her sister, son and his family remain in the city, out of reach after mobile phone networks were cut.

Valentina had been reluctant to leave her lifelong home, fearing her monthly 2,500 hryvnia (£70) pension could not cover the cost of a temporary accommodation. Even before news of the city’s capture, Valentina realised she was stranded. “There is no road back anymore,” she said as a tear slid down her cheek. The Russians are attacking it. I don’t know what I will do or where I will go.”

Vlodomar, 49, was walking Cleopatra, his shih tzu, when he was caught in shelling shattering the bones in his left leg. Doctors operated to save it with three surgical pins dotted down his shin. “I realise now I should have left earlier,” he said as he readied himself for onward evacuation by train to Dnipro. At Dnipro railway station on Friday night, the regular evacuation train from Donbas ferried not only those who had fled Lysychansk, but also Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.

Snizhana, 28, who sat on a bunk with her three children, including a two-month old baby, left Slovyansk after a friend who escaped earlier found them free accommodation in Vinnytsia, west of Kyiv.

“I didn’t want to leave, I thought we could still be safe there,” she said. “But my friend begged me to leave before it was too late and I realised I had to get the children to safety while I still could.”

Andriiy, 41, an emergency rescue worker from the Donetsk salt-mining town of Soledar, had been begging his mother, Raisa, to come with him to Bakhmut ever since the clinic where she worked was destroyed two months ago in Russian shelling.

On Friday she caved, packing up her belongings and bidding farewell to the neighbours she had sheltered with in the basement when Soledar came under attack. The night before, a missile struck metres from their building, leaving a vast crater. She wept as she prepared to leave.

A few miles away, the Russian advance had cut her off from visiting her elderly mother, who suffers from hypertension. “I didn’t want to leave in case I could get to her again,” she said. “Maybe from Bakhmut there will be a way.”

In Bakhmut, Raisa arrived at her sister’s house, its windows already boarded up to protect from the shelling. She may not stay long.

After Lysychansk, Ignachenko predicted, Bakhmut would be next, perhaps even before Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. Already the front line is just a few miles away. Shepherding his mother to the car, Andriiy wheeled out a motor scooter from the family home to ride it, at speed, down the road to Bakhmut, under the sound of Russian artillery.

Russian troops have regularly looted such booty from the places they occupy. “This time, it is the last chance,” he said. “Next time the Russians will already be here.”

In a war that has not gone to plan, the fall of Lysychansk is a moment for Moscow to savour.

Sergei Shogyu, the defence minister, personally delivered the news to President Putin that Russia had taken the last city in Luhansk, the province that, along with Donetsk, makes up Donbas.

This is the eastern part of Ukraine that Moscow declared its “absolute priority” after its forces retreated from around Kyiv in April.

The Ukrainian defence ministry said yesterday that it was “far from game over” but after two months of slow Russian gains at heavy cost to both sides, pushing Kyiv’s forces out of one Donbas province is a symbolic and territorial victory.

Ukrainian officers in Donbas and President Zelensky himself decried the slow delivery of western rocket systems that might have prevented the loss of Lysychansk and, earlier, Severodonetsk. Four such American Himars were put into action only last week and are said to be making a difference in targeting Russian positions but are not enough, yet, to stop the blistering barrage that has let Moscow advance.

Officers report that the shelling intensified after the Himars arrived as Moscow tried to take them out. With four more due by the middle of the month, the Russian assault will intensify.

Ukrainian troops wisely beat a tactical retreat from Lysychansk to avoid encirclement that would have cost Kyiv hundreds of its most experienced fighters in Donbas. They have fallen back to the cities in Donetsk next in line for Russian targeting: Slovyansk, Kramatorsk and Bakhmut. Ukrainian officials say ground ceded in the short term can be retaken later, though attack is far more costly than defence, as Russia’s massive losses attest.

Ukraine will need much more artillery, and fast, to protect the rest of Donbas, but at least its forces are stopping thousands of Russian troops from joining the southern front, where Kyiv is slowly advancing.

In the brutal calculus of war, the coast matters more, whether or not Donbas can be defended.