Video summary of the war Ukraine - Russia: June 10 10:30
(CNN) --
Russian forces now control most of Severodonetsk, the epicenter of the bloody battle for Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.
Street clashes continued on Saturday in the eastern city, where Russian soldiers and Ukrainian troops are still locked in battle.
"The situation is still difficult. The fighting continues, but unfortunately most of the city is under Russian control. Some positional battles are taking place in the streets," said Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, which forms Donbas together. with the neighboring Donetsk region.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the fight over the strategic city may dictate the outcome of the war in the country's east.
"Severodonetsk remains the epicenter of the confrontation in Donbas," Zelensky said during his late-night speech on Wednesday.
advertising
"This is a very fierce battle, very difficult... Probably one of the most difficult in this entire war," he added.
"In many ways, the fate of our Donbas is decided there."
Severdonetsk lies in the heart of Donbas, a sprawling industrial region in eastern Ukraine that has seen intermittent fighting since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists seized control of two territories there: the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic.
Haidai said on Saturday Ukraine was still in control of the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, where 800 people are reportedly sheltering, after a Russian-backed official claimed Ukrainian fighters were also trapped there.
"The story about the blockade of the Azot plant is a complete lie spread by Russian propagandists," Haidi said on the Telegram messaging app.
Rodion Miroshnik, a Russian-backed leader of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, said on Saturday that as many as 400 Ukrainian fighters were taking shelter in the factory compound, hiding alongside civilians in bomb shelters, and that negotiations for their surrender and security evacuation of civilians was ongoing.
"The fighters are trying to make demands, namely to allow them to leave the territory of the chemical plant together with the hostages and to provide them with a corridor to go to Lysychansk. Such demands are unacceptable and will not be taken into account," Miroshnik said.
Death toll rises in Mariupol
Ukrainian soldiers speak during heavy fighting against Russia at the front in Severodonetsk on June 8, 2022.
Further south, in Mariupol, Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office reported an additional 24 child deaths on Saturday, following Russian shelling during a months-long siege of the southern port city.
The blockade ended last month after Russian forces took control of the Azovstal steel plant, where Ukrainian forces had taken refuge.
Millions of tons of grain are still unable to leave Ukraine 2:10
This brings the total number of deaths of minors during the Russian invasion of Ukraine to 287, the Attorney General's Office said in a Telegram post.
More than 492 children have been injured during the war, according to the statement.
The statement added that these figures are not complete, as work is being done to verify child deaths in other places where there is active fighting.
The office also said that 1,971 educational institutions have been damaged by Russian shelling, and 194 of them have been completely destroyed.
On May 25, an adviser to Mariupol Mayor Petro Andrushchenko, who has also moved into the Ukrainian-controlled territory, told CNN that Mariupol City Hall officials believe at least 22,000 city residents died over the three months. of war.
Fresh graves are seen at a cemetery in the city of Mariupol on June 2, 2022.
The news comes as the city is battling a possible cholera outbreak, according to a British intelligence report published on Friday.
Access to drinking water, internet connection and telephone services are unreliable in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, the report said, reflecting concerns of Ukrainian officials as Russia struggles to provide basic public services to the population. civilian population in the areas it has occupied.
"Ukraine will definitely prevail"
As Russian forces advance their control of key regions in Ukraine and the number of civilian casualties mounts, Zelensky has remained adamant that Ukraine will overcome Russia's invasion.
Speaking in a special virtual speech for the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's main defense conference, Zelensky said Ukraine will "definitely prevail" in its war against Russia.
"This is the confrontation between the possible, which we and many people in the world need, and the impossible, which Russia is so desperately fighting for," Zelensky said.
He added that Russia considered his country its "colony" and was doing everything to make it impossible for Ukraine to "exist freely and independently."
"Russia wants to make it impossible for our people to use their land, resources and water in their best interests. Russia wants to steal it, and this active plunder of the territory it has (managed to) occupy, they are taking literally everything," Zelensky added.
"It is on the battlefield in Ukraine that the future rules of this world are decided along with the limits of what is possible," Zelensky said.
Zelensky's harsh warning about the Russian blockade of the Black Sea 0:48
"Let's save the whole world from going back to the times when everything was decided based on the so-called right of power and when certain peoples and their ideas, and many nations, did not matter," Zelensky said.
Ukraine's president also urged leaders to do whatever it takes to "break the ability of Russia and any other country in the world to block the seas and destroy freedom of navigation."
Zelensky warned that failure to do so would lead to an "acute and severe food crisis and famine" in many Asian and African countries.
He added that the Black Sea, through which Ukraine exported most of its food before Russia's invasion, has become the world's most dangerous waterway.
Since the war began, Russia has been preventing Ukraine from exporting goods from its ports, fueling fears of a global food crisis.
Before the war, Russian and Ukrainian wheat supplies accounted for almost 30% of world trade, and Ukraine was the world's fourth-largest exporter of corn and the world's fifth-largest exporter of wheat, according to the US State Department. The United Nations World Food Program, which helps fight global food insecurity, buys about half of its wheat from Ukraine each year and has warned of dire consequences if Ukrainian ports are not opened.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am grateful for your support for Ukraine, I am grateful for your attention to Ukraine, to our country. But remember that this support and attention is not only for Ukraine, but also for you," Zelensky said.
CNN's Kostan Nechyporenko, Jonny Hallam, Joshua Berlinger and Mariya Knight contributed reporting.
war in ukraine
