KYIV, June 14 (Reuters) – Russian forces cut off all routes for evacuating citizens from the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk by destroying the last bridge linking it to a Ukrainian held city on the other side of the river, a Ukrainian official said.

Russian troops were “trying to gain a foothold in the central part of city”, the Ukrainian military said on Tuesday in its daily roundup of the conflict in various parts of the country.

“The situation in Sievierodonetsk is extremely aggravated – the Russians are destroying high-rise buildings and Azot,” Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the Luhansk region, said in a post on Telegram. A day earlier he said hundreds of civilians were sheltering in the grounds of the Azot chemical plant, which had been shelled by Russian forces.

Ukraine has issued increasingly urgent calls for more Western heavy weapons to help defend Sievierodonetsk, which Kyiv says could hold the key to the battle for the eastern Donbas region and the course of the war, now in its fourth month.

On Monday Gaidai had said on social media that some 70% of the city was under enemy control, and the destruction of the last bridge across the river to the twin city of Lysychansk meant any civilians still in Sievierodonetsk were trapped, and it was impossible to deliver humanitarian supplies.

The latest Ukrainian military situation report was filled with forboding over Russian forces building up in several parts of the Donbas.

It reported the enemy was “creating conditions for the development of the offensive on Sloviansk”, and an offensive on the towns of Lyman, Yampil and Siversk – all west of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.

Late on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the battle for the eastern Donbas would go down as one of the most brutal in European history. The region, comprising the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, is claimed by Russian separatists.

“For us, the price of this battle is very high. It is just scary,” he said.

“We draw the attention of our partners daily to the fact that only a sufficient number of modern artillery for Ukraine will ensure our advantage.”

Russia’s main goal is to protect Donetsk and Luhansk, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, after the leader of one of the separatist regions asked for additional forces from Moscow. read more

Ukraine needs 1,000 howitzers, 500 tanks and 1,000 drones among other heavy weapons, Presidential Adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Monday.

Moscow issued the latest of several recent reports saying it had destroyed U.S. and European arms and equipment.

Russia’s defence ministry said high-precision air-based missiles had struck near the railway station in Udachne northwest of Donetsk, hitting equipment that had been delivered to Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine’s interior ministry on Telegram said that Udachne had been hit by a Russian strike overnight Sunday into Monday, without mentioning whether weapons had been targeted.

Moscow has criticised the United States and other nations for sending Ukraine weapons and has threatened to strike new targets if the West supplied long-range missiles.

The European Commission will recommend granting Ukraine official status as an EU candidate country, Politico reported late on Monday, citing several unnamed officials.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Saturday that the EU executive’s opinion on Ukraine’s request to join would be ready by the end of this week.

MARIUPOL AGAIN?

Russia’s RIA news agency quoted a pro-Moscow separatist spokesperson Eduard Basurin as saying Ukrainian troops were effectively cut off in Sievierodonetsk and should surrender or die.

The situation risked becoming like Mariupol, “with a large pocket of Ukrainian defenders cut off from the rest of the Ukrainian troops”, according to Damien Magrou, spokesperson for the International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine that has had forces in Sievierodonetsk.

During the fall of Mariupol last month, hundreds of civilians and badly wounded Ukrainian soldiers were trapped for weeks in the Azovstal steelworks.

Russia has denied targeting civilians in what it calls a “special operation” to restore Russian security and “denazify” its neighbour.

Ukraine and its Western allies call this a baseless pretext for an invasion which has killed thousands of civilians and raised fears of wider conflict in Europe.

More than 5 million people have fled and the world has been hit by a food and energy crisis, dividing Western nations over how to handle it. read more

After failing to take the capital Kyiv following the Feb. 24 invasion, Moscow focused on expanding control in the Donbas, where pro-Russian separatists have held territory since 2014. Russia has also tried to capture more of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.

“The entire front is being subjected to constant shelling,” Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told Ukrainian TV on Monday evening.

The towns of Maryinka, Krasnohorivka, Vuhledar were hit in the coal-producing belt and Avdiivka, home to a big coking plant, he said.

Officials in the Russian-backed separatist-controlled Donetsk region said at least three people, including a child, were killed and 18 were wounded by Ukrainian shelling that hit a market in Donetsk city.

The Donetsk News Agency showed pictures of burning stalls at the central Maisky market and several bodies on the ground. The news agency said 155-mm calibre NATO-standard artillery munitions hit parts of the region on Monday.

Russian news agencies reported a shell had fallen on a maternity hospital in Donetsk, triggering a fire and prompting staff to send patients into the basement. read more

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There has been no immediate reaction from Kyiv to the reports.

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KYIV, Aug 26 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s president urged the world to act much faster to force Russian troops to vacate Europe’s largest nuclear power plant after the site was cut from electricity for hours in an incident he said risked an international radiation disaster.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian shelling on Thursday had sparked fires in the ash pits of a nearby coal power station that disconnected the Zaporozhzhia plant from the power grid. A Russian official said Ukraine was to blame.

Back-up diesel generators ensured power supply vital for cooling and safety systems at the plant, Zelenskiy said, praising the Ukrainian technicians who operate the plant under the gaze of the Russian military.

“The key thing is…international pressure is needed that will force the occupiers to immediately withdraw from the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” he said in a video address on Thursday evening.

“The IAEA and other international organizations must act much faster than they’re acting now. Because every minute the Russian troops stay at the nuclear power plant is a risk of a global radiation disaster,” he said, referring to the United Nations nuclear watchdog.

In Moscow, Russia’s foreign ministry said Russia was doing everything to ensure an IAEA visit to the plant could take place safely. Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Ukraine was trying to disrupt such a visit by attacking the plant.

Residents in Zaporozhzhia city, 50 km northeast of the plant and some 435 km (270 miles) to the southeast of Kyiv, expressed alarm at the situation.

“Of course I am scared. Everyone is scared, we don’t know what will happen next, what is waiting for us every next minute, second,” said social media manager, Maria Varakina, 25.

School teacher Hanna Kuz, 46, said people were afraid that the Ukrainian authorities might not be able to warn residents in time in case of radiation fallout.

Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom said one of the plant’s two functioning reactors had been reconnected to the grid and was again supplying electricity after it fully disconnected on Thursday.

Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in the occupied town of Enerhodar near the plant, blamed Ukrainian armed forces for Thursday’s incident, saying they caused a fire in a forest near the plant.

“This was caused by the disconnection of power lines from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station as a result of provocations by Zelenskiy’s fighters,” Rogov wrote on Telegram. “The disconnection itself was triggered by a fire and short circuit on the power lines.”

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Friday its forces had destroyed a U.S.-made M777 howitzer which it said Ukraine had used to shell the Zaporizhzhia plant. Satellite images showed a fire near the plant but Reuters could not verify its cause.

HOTSPOT

Energoatom said Thursday’s incident had been the first complete disconnection of the plant, which has become a hotspot in the six-month-old war.

Regional authorities in Zaporizhzhia said more than 18,000 people across several settlements remained without electricity on Friday due to damage caused to power lines.

A Reuters cameraman said there was electricity as normal on Friday in the city of Zaporizhzhia.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February, captured the plant in March and has controlled it since, though Ukrainian staff still run it. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of shelling the site, fuelling fears of a nuclear disaster. Zaporizhzhia city remains controlled by Ukrainian authorities.

The United Nations is seeking access to the plant and has called for the area to be demilitarised.

Germany on Friday condemned Russia’s continued occupation of the plant, calling the situation “very, very dangerous”.

Paul Bracken, a national security expert and professor at the Yale School of Management, said the concern was that artillery shells or missiles could puncture the reactor walls and spread radiation far and wide, much like the 1986 accident involving the Chornobyl reactor.

A failure at the Zaporizhzhia plant could “kill hundreds or thousands of people, and damage environmentally a far larger area reaching into Europe,” Bracken said.

“Russian Roulette is a good metaphor because the Russians are spinning the chamber of the revolver, threatening to blow out the brains of the reactor all over Europe,” he said.

FIGHTING

Russia’s ground campaign has stalled in recent months after its troops were repelled from the capital Kyiv but fighting continues along the frontlines to the south and east.

Russian forces control territory along Ukraine’s Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts, while the conflict has settled into a war of attrition in the eastern Donbas region.

Explosions were heard early on Friday in the southern city of Mykolaiv, a battleground as Russian forces try to push westwards along the coast to cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea. The immediate cause of the blasts was unclear, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said.

Ukraine said it had repulsed Russian assaults on Bakhmut and Soledar in the eastern Donetsk region and struck ammunition depots and enemy personnel in the southern Kherson region.

Ukrainian forces fired some 10 rockets from a U.S.-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launcher at the town of Stakhanov in the eastern Donbas region, pro-Moscow breakaway officials in Luhansk were quoted by Russia’s TASS news agency as saying.

Russian state news agency TASS said the deputy traffic police chief in the occupied Ukrainian city of Berdiansk was killed on Friday in a bombing. Its Russian-installed administration blamed the blast on “Ukrainian saboteurs”. read more

Ukraine’s Defence Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. The Odesa regional administration said the officer was wounded in an explosion carried out by what it called unidentified partisan fighters in Berdiansk.

Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield reports of either side.

The Kremlin says its aim is to “denazify” and demilitarise Ukraine and remove perceived security threats to Russia. Ukraine and the West say this is a baseless pretext for a war of conquest.

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