‘Everything is engulfed in fire’
Russia’s military machine is blasting through east Ukraine.
In Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, which in recent weeks has become the focal point of Moscow’s attempt to impose its will on its neighbor, battles raged for the control of multiple villages, the local governor said.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said the Kremlin had ordered the Russian military to overrun the entire Luhansk region by Sunday. Currently, Moscow’s forces control about 95% of the region.
Maliar said “without exaggeration, decisive battles are taking place” in the area, where Ukrainian forces are desperately trying to avoid being encircled.
“We must understand that the enemy has an advantage both in terms of personnel and weapons, so the situation is extremely difficult. And at this very minute these decisive battles are ongoing at the maximum intensity,” Maliar added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky repeated his plea for more Western weapons.
“We need your support, we need weaponry, weapons that will have better capabilities than the Russian weapons,” he told a political studies forum in Milan, Italy.
The villages where combat is fierce are around Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, two cities in the Luhansk region yet to be captured by the Russians, according to Luhansk’s governor, Serhiy Haidai.
Russian shelling and airstrikes on the industrial outskirts of Severodonetsk have intensified, he said.
Haidai said Monday that the situation in Severodonetsk was “very difficult,” with the Ukrainian forces maintaining control over just one area — the Azot chemical plant, where a number of Ukrainian fighters, along with about 500 civilians, are taking shelter.
The Russians keep deploying additional troops and equipment in the area, he said. “It’s just hell there. Everything is engulfed in fire, the shelling doesn’t stop even for an hour,” Haidai said in written comments.
Even so, Haidai said, the staunch Ukrainian resistance is preventing Moscow from deploying its resources to other parts of the country.
The British Defense Ministry noted that the war is not going all Russia’s way.
Russian ground troops are exhausted, the ministry said in an intelligence report Monday. It blamed poor air support for Russia’s difficulty in making swifter progress.
Across the world, inflation is rising as fuel prices surge because of Russia’s war, and as the globe rebounds from the pandemic.
The European Union’s top diplomats gathered in Luxembourg on Monday for talks focused on Ukraine and food security.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called on Russia to lift its blockades of Ukrainian ports to help deliver the millions of tons of grain waiting to be exported.
“I hope — more than hope, I am sure — that the United Nations will at the end reach an agreement,” Borrell said. “One cannot imagine that millions of tons of wheat remain blocked in Ukraine while in the rest of the world, people are suffering [from] hunger. This is a real war crime.... You cannot use the hunger of people as a weapon of war.”
In New York, a Nobel Peace Prize auctioned off by Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees sold Monday night for $103.5 million, shattering the record for a Nobel.
Heritage Auctions could not confirm the identity of the buyer.
“I was hoping that there was going to be an enormous amount of solidarity, but I was not expecting this to be such a huge amount,” Muratov said after the bidding ended on World Refugee Day.
Previously, the most paid for a Nobel Prize medal was $4.76 million in 2014, when James Watson, whose co-discovery of the structure of DNA earned him a Nobel Prize in 1962, sold his.
Muratov, who was awarded the gold medal in October 2021, helped found the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and was editor in chief when it shut down in March amid the Kremlin’s clampdown on journalists and dissent after the invasion of Ukraine.
It was Muratov’s idea to auction it off, having already announced he was donating the accompanying $500,000 cash award to charity.
Muratov has said the proceeds will go directly to UNICEF in its efforts to help children displaced by the war in Ukraine. Just minutes after bidding ended, UNICEF told the auction house it had already received the funds.
