The battle for the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine “will surely go down in military history as one of the most brutal battles in Europe and for Europe,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nighty address on Monday.
This comes after Ukrainian military officials earlier in the day said their troops had been pushed back from the Severodonetsk city center, which along with its twin city Lysychansk, is at the heart of the current battle for what’s still in Ukrainian control in the Luhansk region in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas.
Officials also said three key bridges linking Severodonetsk to Lysychansk are now impassable to vehicles, meaning supply routes in and evacuations out via those routes are impossible.
Zelensky said Ukrainians face the “significant advantage of the Russians in the amount of equipment, and especially — artillery systems.”
“The price of this battle for us is very high. It’s just scary. And we draw the attention of our partners on a daily basis to the fact that only a sufficient number of modern artillery for Ukraine will ensure our advantage and finally the end of Russian torture of the Ukrainian Donbas,” he added.
Zelensky said a boy was killed on Monday by Russian shelling in the battle for Lysychansk.
“This is it: a 6-year-old boy on Moskovska Street is also, as it turned out, a dangerous enemy for the Russian Federation,” he said.
