World News: Russia forces cut vital escape route – Gulf Digital News

World News: Russia forces cut vital escape route – Gulf Digital News

KYIV: Russian forces have blown up a bridge linking the embattled Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk to another city across the river, cutting off a possible evacuation route for civilians, local officials have said.

Sievierodonetsk has become the epicentre of the battle for control over Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Parts of the city have been pulverised in some of the bloodiest fighting since the Kremlin unleashed its invasion on February 24.

“The key tactical goal of the occupiers has not changed: they are pressing in Sievierodonetsk, severe fighting is ongoing there – literally for every metre,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, adding that Russia’s military was trying to deploy reserve forces to the Donbas.

Ukrainian and Russian forces were still fighting street-by-street there yesterday, the governor of Luhansk province, Serhiy Gaidai, said.

Russian forces have taken most of the city but Ukrainian troops remain in control of an industrial area and the Azot chemical plant where hundreds of civilians are sheltering.

But the Russians had destroyed a bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River linking Sievierodonetsk with its twin city of Lysychansk, Gaidai said.

That left just one of three bridges still standing.

“If after new shelling the bridge collapses, the city will truly