Russia attacks Dnipro to isolate the eastern half of Ukraine

Russia has continued its offensive on Monday in the east and south of Ukraine, the two regions in which it is concentrating its attacks after its withdrawal from the northeast of the country.

In addition to the bombings recorded in Severodonetsk, in Lugansk, and the attacks in Donetsk - the two provinces in the eastern region of Donbas - Moscow has destroyed key infrastructure in the last 24 hours, such as the airport in Dnipro, in central Ukraine.

This city, which marks the border between the west and the east of the country, is vital for the transport of supplies and reinforcements for the resistance of the kyiv Army.

According to the Ukrainian General Staff, Moscow is concentrating "an offensive group of troops" in that region with the aim of isolating the Ukrainian troops deployed in Donbas.

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The province of which Dnipro, Dnipropetrovsk, is the capital, suffered the most intense day of Russian rocket attacks on Sunday, according to the regional government.

More than 10 missiles were aimed at Dnipropetrovsk and caused the death of a member of the emergency services.

The regional government has stated in a statement that the Ukrainian armed forces on Sunday repelled an attempt by the Russian infantry to take a municipality in the province of Kherson bordering Dnipropetrovsk, to the south.

The intelligence services of the United States have reported that Russia could already be preparing an assault on Dnipro from the East, according to

, once Donetsk is completely taken.

The fall of this province now depends on the resistance offered by the nucleus formed by Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

In both adjoining municipalities, the presence of the civilian population has been drastically reduced in the face of the imminent offensive by the invading troops.

Last Friday's missile attack on the Kramatorsk railway station, which left almost 60 dead, hastened the flight of civilians.

plumes of smoke

From the road connecting Dnipro with Donetsk, up to three columns of smoke caused by Russian missiles could be seen on Sunday.

In one of these locations, about 50 kilometers from Dnipro, according to sources consulted by EL PAÍS, a Russian military base was targeted.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that its missiles had knocked out a military base in the region used as a training center for foreign volunteers.

Last week, outside Odessa, another barracks with foreign troops was attacked by Russian missiles from the Black Sea.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, a bombardment has ended, also in Dnipro, with several launchers of a vital armament for Ukraine: anti-aircraft defense.

Moscow claims to have destroyed four S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems "supplied by a European country" to Ukraine, allegedly hidden in a hangar outside the city.

kyiv has not confirmed that attack for now, while Slovakia, which announced last week that it had donated those same defense systems to Ukraine, has denied that the S-300 supposedly destroyed were its own.

The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Valentin Reznichenko, did confirm on Sunday that the city's airfield and other nearby infrastructure had been reduced to rubble by shelling.

Despite growing Russian pressure, Dnipro maintains an active urban and working life.

The inhabitants who continue in the main river port of the Dnieper River took advantage of the good temperatures this Monday to walk in the parks and even make purchases in the shopping centers that have gradually reopened their doors.

The transfer is accompanied by the repeated sound of sirens warning of a possible air attack.

Since the beginning of the war, tens of thousands of residents of Dnipro have been leaving the region to move to Western provinces or to countries of the European Union.

Its mayor, Boris Filatov, asked women and children to evacuate the city last Thursday.

A street in the center of Dnipro, this Monday. Albert Garcia (EL PAÍS)

In its part of the war this Monday, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has predicted that "it is likely" that Russian forces will continue to attack transport facilities, as was the case with the Dnipro airport, to "interrupt the supply of goods".

The airport had already been subjected to several Russian bombardments.

With Sunday's attack, kyiv has lost an infrastructure that could be key in the logistical connection between the West and East of Ukraine.

Despite this, air transport does not operate in the country due to the risk of being an easy target for missiles and the Russian air force.

The Ukrainian air units are far inferior in number and power to the Russian ones.

Their fighters and helicopters avoid concentrating, especially in well-known aeronautical centers, to avoid bombing.

A new Russian offensive

In Severodonetsk, a city located in Lugansk, the northern province of Donbas, artillery fire and missiles against residential areas and areas intended for the evacuation of civilians have also not stopped, according to the Ukrainian government, kyiv has assured that, during the last 24 hours, his forces have repelled at least four Russian attacks in that province and in neighboring Donetsk.

“If in the morning houses were burning in the new part of the city, during the day the Russian Army opened fire all over Severodonetsk.

Many of the windows that were still standing were broken.

Two residential buildings and also a private clinic were seriously damaged.

The social and critical infrastructures were almost completely destroyed, ”says the last part of the war of the Ukrainian General Staff.

Further south, in Mariupol, the Russian army continues to try to break Ukrainian resistance in the two strongholds still in local hands: the city's seaport and the Azovstal steel plant.

Full control of this city on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov would allow the Russians to establish the long-awaited land corridor between Donbas and the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, and which now serves as a base of operations for the offensive of the Kremlin in southern Ukraine.

Ukrainian authorities fear that the Russian siege of Mariupol, which has lasted more than a month, has left behind thousands of dead.

The occupation of Mariupol would also allow Russian military forces to dominate the Sea of ​​Azov and reinforce the Black Sea front, opposite Mikolaiv and at the gates of Odessa.

kyiv and Moscow have agreed to launch nine humanitarian corridors on Monday to evacuate civilians from Mariupol and other besieged cities in eastern Ukraine, five of them in Donbas.

Those escape routes allowed the evacuation of 2,824 people on Sunday.

Of these, 2,622 left in buses or their own vehicles from Mariupol and Berdiansk, also in the southeast of the country, the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister, Irina Vereshchuk, reported.

Time is running out and this dropper evacuation of civilians threatens to not be enough to save the population of the urban centers hardest hit by the Russian invasion.

The Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, in a videoconference intervention in the South Korean parliament, has warned that Russia is preparing tens of thousands of soldiers for a new offensive.

“We need more help if we want to survive this war.

It is a very big enemy and they have a lot more weapons than us”, he has said.

The high representative of the EU for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, has corroborated the words of the head of the Ukrainian Government.

Borrell has stated that the concentration of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine portends Russia's intention to redouble its offensive against eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine now appears as a country split in two.

In the western half and in the north of the country, there is no more fighting, although the sirens continue to sound in places like Lviv or kyiv.

There, the withdrawal of troops from the Kremlin reveals the scope of the possible war crimes committed.

Ukraine has announced that more than 1,200 bodies have already been discovered in the capital region alone.

Meanwhile, in the east of the country, the inhabitants who have not fled, due to lack of means or of their own free will, await in fear the final Russian attack.

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