The besieged Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk appears to be almost completely surrounded by attacking Russian forces, as the Kremlin continued to make incremental gains in its offensive in the Donbas region, backed by withering shell fire.

“The Russians are pounding residential neighbourhoods relentlessly,” regional governor, Serhiy Haidai, wrote in a Telegram post on Friday. “The residents of Sievierodonetsk have forgotten when was the last time there was silence in the city for at least half an hour.”

As the cities of Kharkiv to the north and Dnipro to the south also came under attack, analysts said the main Russian effort appeared still to be focused to the east, while Russian attacks elsewhere appeared to be aimed at consolidating their positions and tying down Ukrainian defenders who could otherwise be redeployed.


Underlining the state of the fighting in Donbas, the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, who has cast himself as one of Ukraine’s most vocal cheerleaders, said Russia was making slow but “palpable progress”, as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, accused the Kremlin of carrying out a “genocide” in the country’s east.

Ukraine’s foreign minister also offered a bleak assessment. “The military situation in eastern Ukraine is even worse than people say it is and the country needs heavy weapons now to effectively fight Russia,” Dmytro Kuleba said.

His comments came as the US and its allies indicated they would provide Ukraine with increasingly sophisticated weapons, including the multiple-launch rocket systems Kyiv for which has been appealing.

On Friday, the British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said in Prague that it was appropriate to support Ukraine with tanks and planes if necessary.

Amid the increasingly gloomy news from the campaign in the east, where Ukrainian defenders have been forced to retreat from some positions, Zelenskiy said on Friday that Ukraine was not eager to talk to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, but that it had to face the reality that this would probably be necessary to end the war.

“There are things to discuss with the Russian leader. I’m not telling you that to me our people are eager to talk to him, but we have to face the realities of what we are living through,” Zelenskiy said in an address to an Indonesian thinktank.

“What do we want from this meeting? … We want our lives back … We want to reclaim the life of a sovereign country within its own territory,” he said, adding that Russia did not appear to be ready yet for serious peace talks.

In reply, the Kremlin said on Friday it blamed Ukraine for the fact that peace talks between the two countries were frozen, saying it was unclear what Kyiv wanted.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said in a call with reporters: “The Ukrainian leadership constantly makes contradictory statements. This does not allow us to fully understand what the Ukrainian side wants.”

The situation in Sievierodonetsk appeared particularly desperate, with Russian troops reported in some parts of the city.

Its mayor said Russian forces were in the Myr hotel on Thursday, on the city’s outskirts, and that 1,500 people had died in the fighting, while between 12,000 and 13,000 were trapped.

Russia appeared to have gained full control of the strategic town of Lyman, with the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, saying there was heavy fighting around the city after Ukrainian troops withdrew to a new line of defence.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/27/russian-forces-sievierodonetsk-eastern-ukraine-donbas

Why is Ukraine asking for negotiation, shea Russia left Kyiv as an olive for Ukraine to come to its senses by they refused. And zelenskys said that time for negotiation with Moscow is over after Mariupol was captured by russia. Plus his NATO and EU controllers told him that the war must end on the battlefield. If am russian official..i wont even comments about his talks. Because he is never stable. Whenever Ukraine seems like they will have a better part of Russian military he will start to talk about beating Russia, when Russia is dealing with Ukrainian soldiers he will start to talk about negotiation. he will say one thing now and Tomorrow he will say another thing depending on what he smoked. Let the battlefield decide who is the winners. Sorry to the families that will lose their love ones.

Dvdpity:
Why is Ukraine asking for negotiation, shea Russia left Kyiv as an olive for Ukraine to come to its senses by they refused. And zelenskys said that time for negotiation with Moscow is over after Mariupol was captured by russia. Plus his NATO and EU controllers told him that the war must end on the battlefield. If am russian official..i wont even comments about his talks. Because he is never stable. Whenever Ukraine seems like they will have a better part of Russian military he will start to talk about beating Russia, when Russia is dealing with Ukrainian soldiers he will start to talk about negotiation. he will say one thing now and Tomorrow he will say another thing depending on what he smoked. Let the battlefield decide who is the winners. Sorry to the families that will lose their love ones.

Russian troops are making steady progress in Ukraine’s east. That's sparking fears they could be poised for a bigger breakthrough, and leading to increasingly panicked calls from Kyiv for more powerful weapons

Dvdpity:
Why is Ukraine asking for negotiation, shea Russia left Kyiv as an olive for Ukraine to come to its senses by they refused. And zelenskys said that time for negotiation with Moscow is over after Mariupol was captured by russia. Plus his NATO and EU controllers told him that the war must end on the battlefield. If am russian official..i wont even comments about his talks. Because he is never stable. Whenever Ukraine seems like they will have a better part of Russian military he will start to talk about beating Russia, when Russia is dealing with Ukrainian soldiers he will start to talk about negotiation. he will say one thing now and Tomorrow he will say another thing depending on what he smoked. Let the battlefield decide who is the winners. Sorry to the families that will lose their love ones.

Western are only using him
His eyes go soon clear