Russian troops are “advancing” in several areas north of the city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine after they “complete the regrouping of troops,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Sunday.
On Saturday, the military administration of the city of Sloviansk said hundreds of people fled Sloviansk every day, with the number of evacuations nearly doubling this week. A rocket attack that killed three people on Tuesday “pushed civilians to leave,” the official said.
In nearby Lyman, Russia is also advancing “towards Sviatohirsk and trying to push our troops to the right bank of the Siverskyi Donets River,” the military said.
Russian troops continue to bombard areas in eastern Ukraine. Eight civilians have been killed and 11 injured in the Donetsk region in the past 24 hours after Russian forces shelled 15 areas, an update from regional military-civilian administrations said on Sunday.
Russia also carried out two airstrikes in Donetsk, including one at night in the main city of Kramatorsk, which “inflicted serious damage to two businesses in the city” but caused no casualties, said Oleksandr Honcharenko, the mayor of Kramatorsk.
In the areas around Donetsk and Zaporizhzhya, the Russians are firing “on the front line and the rear areas of our troops to restrain our units and prevent their regrouping,” the army said.
And in Luhansk, Russian troops fired artillery and multiple rocket launchers in five areas, including Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. Airstrikes were also carried out in four areas, regional officials said.
One person was also killed and two others injured after shelling in Hirske and Lysychansk, which also damaged 18 houses and a police station. In Severodonetsk, a building at the Azot chemical plant complex was damaged by Russian artillery shelling, regional officials said, with no casualties.
Russian units “focus on offensive operations to encircle our troops” in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, and to “block key logistics routes,” the army said.
Russian General Aleksandr Dvornikov “by June 10 has been tasked with either taking Severodonetsk completely, or completely closing and controlling the Lysychansk-Bakhmut highway,” said Serhiy Hayday, head of Luhansk’s regional military administration. “That’s why a huge amount of armed forces, everything they had, all the reserves – everything is used to accomplish these two tasks.”
Near Severodonetsk in the city of Lysychansk, a humanitarian aid center was “completely destroyed” by Russian shelling on Sunday, Hayday added.
In the northeast, in the Kharkiv region, the Russians used phosphorus munitions in the Cherkaski Tyshky area northeast of Kharkiv, the army said.
One person was also injured after Russian shelling of Chuguev in southeastern Kharkov, and several other areas came under fire overnight, regional officials said.
“The enemy will not stop firing at the positions of our troops near the city of Kharkov,” the military statement said.
In Sumy in the northeast, Russia fired artillery shells at infrastructure facilities in two areas, the army said, and the Chernihiv region to the north was also shelled.
This post has been updated to include additional information about victims of regional officials.