After weeks of ferocious fighting, Ukrainian forces will retreat from a besieged city in the country's east to avoid encirclement, a regional governor said Friday.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
The city of Sievierodonetsk, the administrative center of the Luhansk region, has faced relentless Russian bombardment. Ukrainian troops fought the Russians in house-to-house battles before retreating to a huge chemical factory on the city's edge, where they holed up in its sprawling underground structures.
In recent days, Russian forces have made gains around Sievierodonetsk and the neighboring city of Lysychansk, on a steep bank across the river, in a bid to encircle Ukrainian forces.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said that the Ukrainian troops have been given the order to leave Sievierodonetsk to prevent that.
"We will have to pull back our guys," he said. "It makes no sense to stay at the destroyed positions because the number of casualties in poorly fortified areas will grow every day."
Haidai said the Ukrainian forces have "received the order to retreat to new positions and continue fighting there" but didn't give further details.
He said the Russians were also advancing toward Lysychansk from Zolote and Toshkivka, adding that Russian reconnaissance units conducted forays on the city edges but were driven out by its defenders.
Following a botched attempt to capture Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, in the early stage of the invasion that started Feb. 24, Russian forces have shifted focus to the Donbas region, where the Ukrainian forces have fought Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.
The Russian military controls about 95% of Luhansk province and about half of neighboring Donetsk province, the two areas that make up the Donbas.
After repeated requests to its Western allies for heavier weaponry to counter Russia's edge in firepower, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said a response had arrived in the form of medium-range American rocket launchers.
A US defense official confirmed Wednesday that all four of the promised High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, were in the hands of Ukrainian forces but said it was not clear if they have been used yet.
The US approved providing the precision-guided systems at the end of May, and once they were in the region, Ukraine's forces needed about three weeks of training to operate them. The rockets can travel about 45 miles (70 kilometers).
The US will send an additional $450 million in military aid to Ukraine, including four more of the medium-range rocket systems, ammunition and other supplies, US officials announced Thursday.
Zelenskyy: Ukraine's EU candidacy will strengthen Europe
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country's formal candidature to join the European Union was a big step towards strengthening Europe at a time when Russia was testing its freedom and unity.
Zelenskyy told EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday that their decision to accept Kyiv's candidacy was among the most important for Ukraine since it broke from the Soviet Union 31 years ago.
"But this decision is not just being made for the benefit of Ukraine. It is the biggest step towards strengthening Europe that could have been made right now, in our time, and when the Russian war is testing our ability to preserve freedom and unity," he said.
European Council chief Charles Michel tweeted after the decision: "A historic moment," adding "Our future is together."
The approval of Kyiv's EU candidacy will anger Russia, which has been concerned with Ukraine's closer ties with the West.
Moscow launched its "special military operation" on Feb. 24 to ensure security on its borders. Kyiv and the West say Putin launched an unprovoked invasion.
Moldova also became an official EU candidate, signaling the bloc's intention to reach deep into the former Soviet Union.
The path to EU membership will be a huge boost for morale in Ukraine but will be a long road and could take years.
Zelenskyy has vowed not to rest until Russia's defeat and full membership had been secured.
"We can defeat the enemy, rebuild Ukraine, join the EU, and then we can rest," he said in a video released by his office.
The move by Ukraine and Moldova to join the EU runs alongside applications by Sweden and Finland to enter NATO in the wake of the Russian invasion
Romanian port struggles to handle flow of Ukrainian grain
With Ukraine's seaports blockaded or captured by Russian forces, neighboring Romania's Black Sea port of Constanta has emerged as a main conduit for the war-torn country's grain exports amid a growing world food crisis.
It's Romania's biggest port, home to Europe's fastest-loading grain terminal, and has processed nearly a million tons of grain from Ukraine – one of the world's biggest exporters of wheat and corn – since the Feb. 24 invasion.
But port operators say that maintaining, let alone increasing, the volume they handle could soon be impossible without concerted European Union support and investment.
"If we want to keep helping Ukrainian farmers, we need help to increase our handling capacities," said Dan Dolghin, director of cereal operations at the Black Sea port's main Comvex operator.
"No single operator can invest in infrastructure that will become redundant once the war ends," he added.
Comvex can process up to 72,000 tons of cereals per day. That and Constanta's proximity by land to Ukraine, and by sea to the Suez Canal, make it the best current route for Ukrainian agricultural exports. Other alternatives include road and rail shipments across Ukraine's western border into Poland and its Baltic Sea ports.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
Efforts to lift the Russian blockade have gotten nowhere, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization projects up to 181 million people in 41 countries could face food crisis or worse levels of hunger this year in connection with the Ukraine war.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said his country was willing to assist with demining operations off Ukraine's southern coast and was considering offering insurance to ships to move millions of tons of grain stuck in the country.
Just days into the Russian invasion, Comvex invested in a new unloading facility, anticipating that the neighboring country would have to reroute its agricultural exports.
This enabled the port over the past four months to ship close to a million tons of Ukrainian grain, most of it arriving by barge down the Danube River. But with 20 times that amount still blocked in Ukraine and the summer harvest season fast approaching in Romania itself and other countries that use Constanta for their exports, Dolghin said it's likely the pace of Ukrainian grain shipping through his port will slow.
"As the summer harvest in Romania gathers momentum, all port operators will turn to Romanian cereals," he warned.
