Russia's advance in eastern Ukraine: British see new hub

Created: 05/28/2022, 11:04 am

By: Kathrin Reikowski

Russia could be pursuing a new strategic goal in the Ukraine war: British secret services see new developments.

The military news ticker.

• Day 93 of the bloody escalated

  Ukraine conflict

  : Russia focuses on the East.

• Russia's new target

  :

  According to estimates by the British secret service, the city of Lyman should be an important hub.

• Escape from Cherson

  : Pro-Russian separatists close border for fleeing Ukrainians.

• This

  news ticker on the military situation in the Ukraine war

  is continuously updated.

Kyiv/London - The Ukraine war is also concentrated on the east of the country at the weekend.

Russia has pooled its forces there and, according to reports from Kyiv, killed at least five civilians on the night of Saturday (May 28). 

The British secret services are now assuming that Russia is likely to focus on one location in the coming days: after the major cities of Mariupol and Kharkiv, the small town of Lyman could become the hub of the Russian offensive.

As early as Friday, the city is said to have been largely under Russian control.

It is located in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk.

Ukraine War: Lyman strategically important to Russia

Lyman is of strategic importance because important railway lines, roads and railway bridges across the Seversky Donets River intersect in the city.

If Russia succeeds in taking control of the city and the region around the city of Sievjerodonetsk, the Kremlin will sell this to its citizens as an important political success, the British write in the intelligence report.

An elderly couple in the basement of a Lyman apartment building.

© Evgeniy Maloletka/AP/dpa

Since the beginning of the war, the British government has regularly published intelligence information on the course of the war of aggression in an unusually open manner.

Moscow under President Vladimir Putin accuses London of a targeted disinformation campaign.

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Ukraine War: Pro-Russian separatists close northern regional borders to fleeing Ukrainians

Meanwhile, people can no longer flee north from the Cherson region in southern Ukraine, which is occupied by Russian troops.

"The border crossing in the direction of the Mykolaiv and Dnepropetrovsk regions is very dangerous given the systematic shelling by Ukrainian fighters," said the deputy head of the pro-Russian military administration, Kirill Stremusov, explaining the decision.

Departures from the Cherson region are instead possible via the Crimean peninsula or the Russian-controlled part of the Zaporizhia region.

A school was destroyed near Cherson in early May during the Ukraine war.

© Vincenzo Circosta/Imago

The separatists may want to prevent people from fleeing to Ukrainian areas.

Under the new separatist administration, the area is apparently to be cut off from Ukraine and annexed to Russia.

The Russian national currency, the ruble, was introduced, the administration has demanded the issuance of Russian passports and the entry of the region into the Russian Federation - even without a prior referendum.

Even Moscow reacted cautiously to the last initiative.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the people of the region must decide their own fate.

, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine,

said in his nightly video address that both Lyman and Sievarodonetsk "will end up being Ukrainian".