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| Photo Credit: AP. |
LYMAN, Ukraine (AP) — Russian troops abandoned a key Ukrainian city so rapidly that they left the bodies of their comrades in the streets, offering more evidence Tuesday of Moscow’s latest military defeat as it struggles to hang on to four regions of Ukraine that it illegally annexed last week.
Meanwhile,
Russia’s upper house of parliament rubber-stamped the annexations following
“referendums” that Ukraine and its Western allies dismissed as fraudulent.
Responding
to the move, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy formally ruled out talks
with Russia, declaring that negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin
are impossible after his decision to take over the regions.
The Kremlin
replied by saying that it will wait for Ukraine to agree to sit down for talks,
noting that it may not happen until a new Ukrainian president takes office.
“We will
wait for the incumbent president to change his position or wait for a future
Ukrainian president who would revise his stand in the interests of the
Ukrainian people,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Despite the
Kremlin’s apparent political bravado, the picture on the ground underscored the
disarray Putin faces in his response to Ukrainian advances and attempts to
establish new Russian borders.
Over the
weekend, Russian troops pulled back from Lyman, a strategic eastern city that
the Russians had used as a logistics and transport hub, to avoid being
encircled by Ukrainian forces. The city’s liberation gave Ukraine a key vantage
point for pressing its offensive deeper into Russian-held territories.
Two days
later, an Associated Press team reporting from the town saw at least 18 bodies
of Russian soldiers still on the ground. The Ukrainian military appeared to
have collected the bodies of their comrades after fierce battles for control of
Lyman, but they did not immediately remove those of the Russians.
“We fight
for our land, for our children, so that our people can live better, but all
this comes at a very high price,” said a Ukrainian soldier who goes by the nom
de guerre Rud.
Lyman
residents emerged from basements where they had hidden during the battle and
built bonfires for cooking. The city has had no water, electricity or gas since
May. Residential buildings were burned. A few residents emerged on bicycles.
An
85-year-old woman, who identified herself by her name and patronymic, Valentyna
Kuzmivna, recalled a recent explosion nearby.
“I was
standing in the hall, about five meters away, when it boomed,” she said. “God
forbid, now I can’t hear well.”
The Russian
forces launched more missile strikes at Ukrainian cities Tuesday as Kyiv’s
forces pressed their counteroffensives in the east and the south.
Several
missiles hit Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, damaging its
infrastructure and causing power cuts. Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said one
person was killed and at least two others, including a 9-year-old girl, were
wounded.
In the
south, four civilians were wounded when Russian missiles struck the city of
Nikopol.
After
reclaiming control of Lyman in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian forces pushed
further east and may have gone as far as the border of the neighboring Luhansk
region as they advance toward Kreminna, the Washington-based Institute for the
Study of War said in its latest analysis of the combat situation.
On Monday,
Ukrainian forces also scored significant gains in the south, raising flags over
the villages of Arkhanhelske, Myroliubivka, Khreshchenivka, Mykhalivka and
Novovorontsovka.
Despite the
latest military gains, Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Yevhen Perebyinis
called for the deployment of more weapons to Ukraine following the partial
mobilization announcement by Russia last month.
In a video
address to a conference in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Russia’s war against
Ukraine on Tuesday, Perebyinis said the additional weapons wouldn’t lead to an
escalation but instead would help to end the war sooner.
“We need
additional long-range artillery and ammunition, combat aircraft and armed
vehicles to continue the liberation of the occupied territories,” the deputy
minister said. “We need anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems to
secure our civilians and critical infrastructure from the terrorist attacks on
the Russian forces.”
Russian
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that the military has recruited
more than 200,000 reservists as part of a partial mobilization launched two
weeks ago. He said that the recruits were undergoing training at 80 firing
ranges before being deployed to the front lines in Ukraine.
Putin’s
mobilization order said that up to 300,000 reservists were to be called up, but
it held the door open for an even bigger activation. It sparked protests in
many areas across Russia and drove tens of thousands of men to flee Russia in a
challenge to the Kremlin.
The
Ukrainian successes in the east and the south came even as Russia moved to
absorb four Ukrainian regions amid the fighting there.
The upper
house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, voted Tuesday to
ratify treaties to make the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern
Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions part of Russia. The lower house did so on
Monday.
Putin is
expected to quickly endorse the annexation treaties.
Russia’s
moves to incorporate the Ukrainian regions have been done so hastily that even
the exact borders of the territories being absorbed were unclear.
In other
developments, the head of the company operating Europe’s largest nuclear plant
said Ukraine is considering restarting the Russian-occupied facility to ensure
its safety as winter approaches.
In an
interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Energoatom President Petro
Kotin said the company could restart two of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power
Plant’s reactors in a matter of days.
“If you have low temperature, you will just
freeze everything inside. The safety equipment will be damaged,” he said.
Fears that
the war in Ukraine could cause a radiation leak at the Zaporizhzhia plant
prompted the shutdown of its remaining reactors. The plant has been damaged by
shelling, prompting international alarm over the potential for a disaster.
Adam Schreck
reported from Kyiv.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine