Strategic eastern town ‘completely cleared’ of Russians: Zelensky
- October 3, 2022
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Pope Francis waves from the window of the Apostolic Palace during the weekly Angelus prayer on October 2, 2022 in The Vatican. – Pope Francis on Sunday deplored Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory and called on the Russian leader to stop the war and on Ukraine’s president to be open to talks. (Photo by Laurent EMMANUEL / AFP)
London
Following the withdrawal of Russian troops from Lyman in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced full control of the strategically important city.
As of the afternoon the city had been “completely cleared,” the president said in a video lasting just 10 seconds on Sunday.
Lyman is located in the eastern Donetsk region. The fall of the town opens the way for Ukrainian troops to move towards Kreminna and Svatove. Both towns are located in the Luhansk region and are considered important transport hubs, especially Svatove.
Russia has probably suffered heavy losses as its forces retreated from Lyman, according to British military intelligence.
Lyman is a rail hub and features a key road crossing over the Donets river, “behind which Russia has been attempting to consolidate its defences,” the intelligence update said.
The military experts at the renowned Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in Washington see the withdrawal from Lyman “almost certainly” as a conscious decision by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
It was not the military commandos who decided not to reinforce the front lines near the towns of Kupyansk or Lyman, but the president himself, an initial analysis said on Saturday evening. It indicated that Putin would rather take care of securing strategic areas in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions. Lyman is in the Donetsk region.
Ukrainian troops have launched an offensive in the south of the country to regain territory occupied by Russian forces but suffered many losses in the process, Moscow has said.
They also reported that “Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian ground attack on Kozacha Lopan” in the northern Kharkiv region, which the Ukrainian general staff confirmed.
Such attacks indicated that Putin was probably continuing to pursue the goal of regaining control over territories beyond the regions he had illegally annexed – rather than deploying soldiers against the Ukrainian offensive in the Donbass.
Military historian Phillips P O’Brien wrote on Twitter that the Ukrainian success at Lyman was “far more impressive” than the success in the Kharkiv region.
“The Ukrainians might never find an area as weakly defended as Kharkiv again. What they’ve learned/done at Lyman points the way to their overall strategic victory,” O’Brien qrote. “The Russians had made this a major priority area for months, seemed to have lots of troops in the area.”
The Russian Defence Ministry also reported an attack on an office of the Ukrainian secret service in the Dnipropetrovsk region, with more than 35 employees killed, including foreigners. No details were given.
Russia’s Constitutional Court says it does not see the internationally unrecognized annexation of four Ukrainian territories as a violation of Russian law.
The inclusion of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions in the Russian Federation is in line with the constitution, the court said on Sunday in St Petersburg, according to state news agency TASS.
The next step is for the two houses of the Russian parliament – the State Duma and the Federation Council – to the offer their own endorsement. Approval is all but assured.
– Ranjith Perera –
