war in Ukraine
Lysychansk: Moscow is celebrating, Kyiv is fighting
Badly damaged residential buildings in Lysychansk. Photo: -/(Military Administration of the Luhansk Region/AP/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
After heavy fighting, Ukraine loses the city of Lysychansk – and with it de facto control of the entire Luhansk region. What does this mean for the further course of the fights?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is doing his best to sell his compatriots the defeat in the eastern Luhansk region as an omen of impending victory.
“If the command of our army withdraws people from certain points on the front where the enemy has the greatest fire advantage (…), it means only one thing: that thanks to our tactics, thanks to the increased supply of modern weapons, we will come back,” he said him on the weekend. Shortly before, it became known that his army had lost the strategically important city of Lysychansk to the Russian attackers after weeks of fighting.
For the Ukrainians, the defeat in Lysychansk effectively meant the loss of the entire Luhansk region. From Moscow’s point of view, a key war goal has been achieved after more than four months. The Luhansk administrative center Sieverodonetsk fell a week and a half ago. According to Ukrainian sources, isolated fighting is now only raging near Lyssychansk in the village of Bilohorivka on the Siwerskyi Donets river.
90 percent of infrastructure damaged
The past few weeks have brought death and destruction to Luhansk. According to Governor Serhij Hajdaj, 90 percent of the infrastructure has been damaged and 60 percent of the houses have been destroyed. In Lyssychansk, only around a tenth of the once more than 100,000 inhabitants are left. Many are on the run.
In Moscow, meanwhile, the war of aggression is once again being celebrated as an alleged peace mission to “cleanse” the neighboring country of nationalists. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the state television station RT, even suggests celebrating the “liberation” of larger towns with nationwide fireworks. “It’s a nice tradition.”
Western experts say that the fact that Ukraine had to give up Lysychansk is painful, but logical in a military sense. In view of Russia’s clear superiority, the Ukrainian army prevented it from being encircled, former NATO general Hans-Lothar Domröse told the German Press Agency on Monday. “They forestalled that with the quick and tactically sensible, technically good delay operation. And that’s why they had to get out. Otherwise they would just starve to death like in the Mariupol factory,” he says.
The Kremlin also wants to bring Donetsk under its control
“Russia is clearly superior,” says the retired general. For the Ukrainians, it’s about “military artful, skillful delaying, damaging the attacker,” said Domröse. “They obviously got heavy weapons out unscathed, maybe civilians too.”
For Russia, on the other hand, the war with the conquests in Luhansk is anything but over. The Kremlin also wants to bring neighboring Donetsk under its control. And so Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu declared on Monday in a report to President Vladimir Putin: “The armed forces of the Russian Federation are continuing the military special operation.” The Ukrainian army still controls large parts of Donetsk, which the Kremlin – like Luhansk – has already recognized as an independent state in the face of international protests.
But the Russians are already aiming for the next strategic goal there: the conurbation between Slowjansk and Kramatorsk. According to the Ukrainian General Staff, enemy troops have already crossed the Siwerskyi Donets from the east.
On the right bank of the river, which runs in an arc in the region, the Russians have been able to capture a few new bridgeheads – and therefore pose a threat to the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk conurbation. There are now no natural bridgeheads from either the north or the east There are more obstacles to a Russian advance on the strategically important industrial area, which was home to a good half a million people before the war.
Ukraine hopes for more arms deliveries
However, none of this means that Moscow has already won the battle for Donbass. On the one hand, the military capacities of the Russians are limited and the allied East Ukrainian separatists are partly exhausted from the long fighting. On the other hand, the Ukrainians have turned the area around Slowjansk and Kramatorsk into a veritable fortress. They are now hoping for supplies of arms from the West in order to be able to launch offensives.
General Domröse says that it is not yet apparent that the Western weapons delivered so far have already changed the military balance of power or even been a “game changer”. Heavy weapons, armored personnel carriers and tanks in general would be needed to move from place to place now in the delay without taking casualties.
In any case, Kremlin boss Putin wants to give some of his soldiers a little time off. Those who fought successfully for Luhansk should now “rest” and gather strength for the upcoming battles. Other units, on the other hand, should continue to fulfill their “tasks”, Putin told Defense Minister Shoigu – in the hope that “everything will happen in their directions as in Luhansk”.