‘Everything is on fire’: Ukraine region weathers bombardment
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian attacks laid down a curtain of fire Tuesday across areas of eastern Ukraine as pockets of resistance continue to deny Moscow full military control of the region, almost four months after the Kremlin unleashed its invasion.
“Today everything that can burn is on fire,” Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, told The Associated Press.
Russia’s war has caused alarm over food supplies from Ukraine to the rest of the world and gas supplies from Russia, as well as raising questions about security in Western Europe.
A picture taken on June 21, 2022 from the town of Lysychansk, shows a large plume of smoke rising on the horizon, behind the town of Severodonetsk, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (ANATOLII STEPANOV/)
The Russian military currently controls about 95% of the Luhansk region. But Moscow has struggled for weeks to overrun it completely, despite deploying additional troops and possessing a massive advantage in military assets.
In the city of Sievierodonetsk, the hotspot of the fighting, Ukrainian defenders held on to the Azot chemical plant in the industrial outskirts. About 500 civilians are sheltering at the plant, and Haidai said the Russian forces are turning the area “into ruins.”
“It is a sheer catastrophe,” Haidai told the AP in written comments about the plant. “Our positions are being fired at from howitzers, multiple rocket launchers, large-caliber artillery, missile strikes.”
A firefighter secures a partially destroyed educational and laboratory building of a college hit the day before by a rocket in Kharkiv on June 21, 2022. (SERGEY BOBOK/)
The defense of the chemical plant recalled the besieged Azovstal steel mill in the brutalized city of Mariupol, where Ukrainian troops were pinned down for weeks.
Neighboring Lysychansk, the only city in the Luhansk region that is still fully under Ukrainian control, also was targeted by multiple air strikes.
The air strikes on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk ruined more than 10 residential buildings and a police station. In the city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region, a school burned down as the result of the shelling, the president’s office said. The Luhansk and Donetsk regions make up the Donbas.
Separately, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland met for about an hour at a Ukrainian-Polish border post with Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova. They discussed how the U.S. can help identify, apprehend and prosecute anyone involved in war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine.
A man rides a bicycle among debris in Lysychansk on June 21, 2022, as Ukraine says Russian shelling has caused "catastrophic destruction" in the eastern industrial city, which lies just across a river from Severodonetsk where Russian and Ukrainian troops have been locked in battle for weeks. (ANATOLII STEPANOV/)
“We and our partners will pursue every avenue available to make sure that those who are responsible for these atrocities are held accountable,” Garland said in a statement.
Garland also tapped Eli Rosenbaum — a 36-year Justice Department veteran who headed efforts to identify and deport Nazi war criminals — as counselor for war crimes accountability. He will coordinate efforts to hold accountable those responsible for war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, also came under heavy Russian shelling on Tuesday. Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said 15 civilians were killed and 16 wounded in Kharkiv and elsewhere in the region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a joint press conference with Prime Minister of Luxembourg following talks in Kyiv on June 21, 2022. (SERGEI SUPINSKY/)
Speaking Tuesday to graduates of Russian military academies at a lavish Kremlin reception, Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the Russian armed forces as heirs to the country’s “legendary” military traditions. “The country is now going through another series of trials,” he said, expressing confidence that Russia will overcome all the challenges.
“There is no doubt that we will become even stronger,” he added.
International support for Ukraine was demonstrated once more when a Nobel Peace Prize medal auctioned off by Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov sold Monday night for $103.5 million, shattering the old record for a Nobel. The auction aimed to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees.
Geopolitical tensions stemming from Russia’s invasion returned to Lithuania. Due to European Union sanctions on Moscow, the Baltic country earlier this month banned rail traffic from crossing its territory from Russia to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
Kaliningrad, with a population of around 430,000 people, is wedged between Lithuania and Poland, both EU countries, and is isolated from the rest of Russia.
Ukrainian troop ride a tank on a road of the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on June 21, 2022, as Ukraine says Russian shelling has caused "catastrophic destruction" in the eastern industrial city of Lysychansk, which lies just across a river from Severodonetsk where Russian and Ukrainian troops have been locked in battle for weeks. (ANATOLII STEPANOV/)
Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful secretary of the Kremlin’s Security Council and a hard-liner, visited Kaliningrad on Tuesday and vowed to respond to the ban.
“The relevant measures are being drawn up in an interagency format and will be adopted shortly,” Patrushev said, without elaborating. He added: “Their consequences will have a significant negative impact on the population of Lithuania.”
In other developments on Tuesday, John Kirby, a national security spokesman for the White House, said it was “appalling” that the Kremlin suggested two Americans captured by Russian forces in Ukraine could be sentenced to death.
Kirby declined to say what steps the U.S. would take if Russia does not treat Alex Drueke and Andy Huynh, both from Alabama, as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “it depends on the investigation,” when asked during an NBC interview whether the Americans could be sentenced to death like two Britons and a Moroccan captured while fighting for Ukraine.
