As a town buries its dead in a mass grave, Russia bombards Ukraine’s east

On Wednesday, Russian soldiers pummelling Ukrainian-held twin cities in the Donbas area, which has been the focal point of the three-month conflict, threatening to cut off the final major escape route for people stuck in their path.

Russia is attempting to take full control of the Donbas, which consists of two eastern provinces Moscow claims on behalf of separatists after failing to grab Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and second city Kharkiv.

Thousands of Russian troops have flooded into the region, attacking from three directions in an attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces defending Sievierodonetsk and its twin Lysychansk. Their defeat would put the entire province of Luhansk under Russian control, which is a key Kremlin war goal.

According to Serhiy Gaidai, the regional governor of Luhansk, police in Lysychansk are gathering the bodies of those killed and burying them in mass graves. He stated that 150 victims were buried in a mass grave in one Lysychansk neighbourhood.

Russia’s “army is having some tactical success that is threatening to become an operational success in the direction of Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk,” according to Oleksiy Arestovych, a presidential adviser in Ukraine.

Arestovych stated Sievierodonetsk and Bakhmut, a town to the southeast, were in danger of being ringed. “It’s probable that settlements may be abandoned, and we’ll suffer significant losses.”

After the conflict, families of persons buried in mass graves will be able to rebury their loved ones, and police are issuing documents allowing Ukrainians to obtain death certificates for their loved ones, according to Gaidai.

According to Gaidai, the major road out of Sievierodonetsk was being shelled, but humanitarian aid was still pouring in. Russian troops “heavily outnumber us” in several sections of Ukraine’s east, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

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