Russian forces have withdrawn from Lyman, a strategic city for their operations in eastern Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday, just a day after Moscow’s annexation of the region that was declared illegal by the West.
“In connection with the creation of a siege threat, Allied troops were withdrawn from the Krasny Liman settlement to more advantageous lines,” the ministry said on Telegram, using the Russian name for the town of Lyman.
Russian state media Russia-24 reported that the reason for Russia’s withdrawal was because “the enemy used both Western-made artillery and intelligence from North Atlantic alliance countries.”
The withdrawal marks Ukraine’s most significant gain since its successful counter-offensive in northeastern Kharkiv last month.
Russia’s announcement comes just hours after Ukrainian forces said they had surrounded Russian troops in the city, located in Donetsk’s Kramatorsk district.
Ukrainian forces said on Saturday that they had entered Stavky, a village neighboring Lyman, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, a military spokesperson for the eastern grouping of Ukrainian forces.
“The Russian group in the Lyman area is surrounded. The settlements of Yampil, Novoselivka, Shandryholove, Drobysheve and Stavky were liberated. Stabilization measures are underway there,” Cherevatyi told a televised news conference on Saturday morning.
“[A libertação de] Lyman is important because it is another step towards the liberation of Ukrainian Donbass. This is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Severodonetsk. So in turn it is psychologically very important,” he said.
Cherevatyi said the actions of Ukrainian troops were setting the tone for “interrupting the course of these hostilities”. He added that there were “many dead and wounded” but could not provide further details.
The head of Luhansk’s regional military administration, Serhiy Hayday, also revealed on Saturday more details of the Lyman offensive, suggesting that Russian forces had offered to pull back, but to no avail on the Ukrainian side.
“Occupants asked [ao seu comando] the possibility of retreating, and they were refused. So they have two options. No, they actually have three options. Try to break through, surrender or everyone will die,” Hayday said.
“There are several thousand of them. Yes, about five thousand. There is still no exact number. Five thousand is still a colossal grouping. There has never been such a large group at the siege before. All routes for the supply of ammunition or the withdrawal of the group are completely blocked,” he added.
Yurii Mysiagin, a Ukrainian member of Parliament and deputy head of the parliamentary committee on national security, referred to the move to Stavky on Saturday when he posted a video on Telegram showing a Ukrainian tank coming up the road with a clear sign indicating the Stavky region. THE CNN could not independently verify the original source or date.
A video posted on social media and shared by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff shows two Ukrainian soldiers in a military vehicle taping the flag to a large sign with the word “Lyman”.
“We are opening our country’s flag and planting it on our land. In Lyman. Everything will be Ukraine”, says one of the soldiers to the camera.
Russia says it annexes Ukrainian land it doesn’t fully control
On Friday, the Kremlin announced the annexation of four Ukrainian regions that its military only partially controls, adding to the alleged seizure of Crimea in 2014.
- Donetsk region – 56.8%
- Zaporizhzhia region – 71.5%
- Kherson region – 82.5%
- Luhansk region – 99.7%
Source: Institute for the Study of War with the AEI Critical Threat Project. Data as of September 30, 2022
Threat of the Chechen leader
Meanwhile, pressure appears to be building on Russian President Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield.
Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of the Chechen republic, in an angry statement against Russian generals after Lyman’s withdrawal, said it was time for the Kremlin to make use of all the weapons at its disposal.
“In my personal opinion, we need to take more drastic measures, including declaring martial law in the border territories and using low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov said on his Telegram channel. “There’s no need to make every decision with the Western American community in mind.”
Earlier this week, Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, discussed the use of nuclear weapons on his Telegram channel, saying it was permissible if the existence of the Russian state was threatened by an attack even by forces. conventional.
“If the threat to Russia exceeds our established threat threshold, we will have to respond […] this is certainly not a bluff,” he wrote.
Concerns have sharply increased that Moscow could resort to the use of nuclear weapons following Putin’s proclamation on Friday that Russia would seize nearly a fifth of Ukraine, declaring that the millions of people living there would be Russian citizens.” forever”.
The announcement was deemed illegal by the United States and many other countries, but the fear is that the Kremlin could argue that attacks on these territories now constitute attacks on Russia.
In his Kremlin speech, the Russian leader made only a passing reference to nuclear weapons, noting that the United States was the only country that used them on the battlefield.
“By the way, they set a precedent,” he added.
Head of nuclear power plant arrested
Also on Saturday, the director general of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was detained by a Russian patrol, according to the president of the state-owned nuclear company Energoatom.
Director General Ihor Murashov was in his vehicle on the way to the factory when it was “stopped … pulled out of the car and, blindfolded, driven in an unknown direction. For now, there is no information on its fate,” Petro Kotin of Energoatom said in a statement.
“Murashov is a licensed person and has primary and sole responsibility for the nuclear and radiological safety of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant,” Kotin said, adding that his detention “jeopardizes the safety of Ukraine’s operation and Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.”
Kotin called for Murashov’s release and urged the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to “take all possible immediate action to release him as a matter of urgency”.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry “strongly” condemned Murashov’s “illegal detention”, calling it “another manifestation of state terrorism on the Russian side and a gross violation of international law”.
“We urge the international community, in particular the UN, the IAEA and the G7, to also take decisive action to this end,” the ministry said in a statement.
Overnight, Russia hit Zaporizhzhia with four S300 missiles, according to regional administration chief Oleksandr Starukh.
And in Kharkiv, the Regional Prosecutor’s Office said Saturday that the bodies of 22 civilians, including 10 children, were found after Russian bombings of a convoy of cars near the eastern city of Kupiansk.
The cars were shot at by the Russian army on September 25 “when civilians were trying to evacuate”, it said in a Telegram post, adding that an investigation was ongoing.
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and police “discovered a convoy of seven cars that were shot dead near the village of Kurylivka, Kupiansk district” on Friday, the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office said.
The SBU confirmed on Telegram that it would be investigating a “war crime” in which at least 20 people died in “a brutal attack”.
THE CNN could not independently verify the allegations. There was no official response from Russia to the allegations made.
*With input from Darya Tarasova, Josh Pennington and Zayn Nabbi of CNN.
Source: CNN Brasil
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