Ukrainian soldiers operate an armored personnel carrier in recently withdrawn territory.
Kyiv:
Russia said on Saturday that its troops had abandoned their stronghold of Lyman in Ukraine’s east for fear of besieging their stronghold of Lyman and the leader of Chechnya, a close Kremlin ally, said Moscow would be harassed in response to using a low-yield nuclear weapon. Should consider.
The city’s collapse comes as a major blow to Moscow after President Vladimir Putin announced the Donetsk region along with three other regions at a ceremony on Friday, which Kyiv and the West denounced as a farce.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said, “Allied forces were withdrawn from the settlement of Lyman in more advantageous lines … because of the building threat of a siege.”
Kyiv was first told that it had surrounded thousands of Russian troops in the area and then its forces were inside the city of Lyman, a statement that ended hours of official silence from Moscow.
Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who describes himself as a foot soldier of President Putin, said he was unable to remain silent after Moscow abandoned the area that the Kremlin declared part of Russia a day earlier.
“In my personal opinion, more stringent measures should be taken in the border areas, up to the declaration of martial law and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons,” Mr Kadyrov wrote in a post on Telegram in which he ridiculed a Russian general.
There is no mention of encirclement of its troops in the statement of the Russian Defense Ministry.
“The Russian group has been surrounded in the area of Lyman,” Serhi Cherevati, spokesman for Ukraine’s Eastern Forces, said hours ago.
He said Russia had between 5,000 and 5,500 troops in Lyman, but the number of encircled troops may have been lower due to casualties.
“We are already in Lyman, but there are battles,” the spokesman said on television.
Two smiling Ukrainian soldiers tape the yellow and blue national flag at the welcome sign at the entrance to the city north of the Donetsk region, a video posted by the president’s chief of staff shows.
“October 1. We are hoisting our state flag and setting it on our land. Lyman will be Ukraine,” said one of the soldiers, standing on the bonnet of a military vehicle.
Neither side’s claims to the battlefield could be independently verified.
logistics hub
Russia has used Lyman as a logistics and transportation hub for its operations north of the Donetsk region. Its collapse will be Ukraine’s biggest battlefield gain since lightning struck the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.
A Ukrainian military spokesman said the capture of Lyman would allow Kyiv to advance into the Luhansk region, the full capture of which Moscow announced in early July after weeks of slow, grinding progress.
“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbass. It is an opportunity to go beyond Kreminna and Svyarodonetsk, and it is very important psychologically,” he said.
The Donetsk and Luhansk regions together make up the wider Donbass region which has been a major focus for Russia shortly after the start of Moscow’s invasion on 24 February, which it called a “special military operation” to recapture its neighbour.
Vladimir Putin declared the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya as Russian land at Friday’s ceremony – an area equal to about 18% of Ukraine’s total surface land area.
Ukraine and its Western allies called Russia’s move illegal. Kyiv vowed to continue liberating its lands of Russian forces and said it would not hold peace talks with Moscow while Vladimir Putin remains president.
Retired US General Ben Hodges, a former US military commander in Europe, said the Russian defeat at Lyman would be a major political and military embarrassment for the Russian leader following Putin’s announcement.
“It casts in a bright light that their claim is illegitimate and cannot be enforced,” he said.
It remains to be seen how Ukrainian commanders will take advantage of this route, he said, adding that it will likely further degrade the morale of Moscow troops occupying other Ukrainian territory.
Mr Cherewati said the operation around Lyman was still ongoing and that Russian troops were trying unsuccessfully to break out of the siege.
“Some people are surrendering, they have many people killed and injured, but the operation is not over yet,” he said.
The exiled governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk said Russian forces had asked for a safe exit from the encirclement, but Ukraine declined the request.
Ukraine’s General Staff told Reuters it had no such information.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)