Russia is currently attempting to capture the Bakhmut hub in the Donetsk region. If that succeeds, Putin’s troops would control an important key position in eastern Ukraine. All news about the attack on Ukraine can be found here in the ticker.
9:09 a.m .: According to Ukrainian information, Russian troops in the Donbass are still striving for the complete conquest of the Luhansk region. “The enemy does not stop attacking,” said the Ukrainian general staff on Tuesday morning. In particular, attempts are being made to encircle the strategically important cities of Sieverodonetsk and Lysychansk.
At the same time, Russia’s armed forces at Sievjerodonetsk also suffered particularly high losses, it said. This information could not initially be verified. Fierce fighting also continued around the town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.
8:53 a.m .: According to British intelligence services, Russia has made some local progress in its offensive in eastern Ukraine. Moscow has significantly increased the intensity of its activities in the Donbass and is trying to encircle several cities there, the British Ministry of Defense said in an update on Tuesday morning. However, this is only part of Russia’s mission to bring the entire Donbass region under its control. The Ukrainian resistance is strong. If the front line in the Donbass shifts further west, it is likely to pose further logistical difficulties for the Russians, according to British intelligence.
For months now, the British government has been releasing intelligence information on the course of the war of aggression in an unusually open manner. Moscow accuses London of a targeted disinformation campaign.
Tuesday, May 24, 7:25 a.m.: According to the Ukrainian government, the Russian armed forces are trying to seize key positions in eastern Ukraine with heavy bombardments. The situation in the Donbass is even “extremely difficult” because the Russians are trying to “eliminate everything alive,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday night. Russia is trying to encircle the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. The Ministry of Defense reported fierce fighting around Bakhmut.
The fall of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region would give Russian troops control of a crucial hub that currently serves as the command center for much of Ukraine’s war effort in the east. “We have reached a point where we are in the process of making evacuations mandatory,” said the head of Bakhmut’s military administration, Serhiy Kalian.
The governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Gajday, on the other hand, reported that the shelling in Severodonetsk was so heavy that evacuations were impossible. “Such a density of shelling will not allow us to calmly gather people and take them,” he explained on Telegram.
In the south, on the other hand, the front seemed stable, although the Ukrainians are claiming gains. The Ukrainian Southern Command reported on Tuesday night that its divisions were “advancing” through the Mykolaiv region in the direction of the Cherson region. The Ukrainians also accused the Russian “occupiers” of killing fleeing civilians with mines, bombs and gunfire.
11:41 p.m .: According to Ukrainian information, Russian rocket attacks in eastern Ukraine destroyed the railway infrastructure on Monday. Governor Valentyn Resnichenko said on his Telegram channel that four rocket hits in the Dnipropetrovsk region severely damaged tracks and overhead lines. So nobody was injured. It is not yet known when train services can be resumed. The Russian war of aggression on the neighboring country has now lasted three months.
11:20 p.m .: According to Ukrainian information, three civilians were killed in Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine on Monday. Six other people were injured, the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, wrote on Telegram. The Ukrainian army said it had destroyed eight tanks, one drone, six aircraft and other military equipment on the Russian side. A Russian missile is said to have been shot down in the Novoukrainka region. The information could not be independently verified.
According to Ukrainian information, Russia is expanding the command structures of the military police in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian general staff wrote on Monday evening that 19 so-called commander’s offices had been set up in the occupied regions of Cherson and Zaporizhia.
7.30 p.m .: The fighting in eastern Ukraine continues to be sluggish for Russia and not according to plan. To change this, the Russian army apparently used the largest mortar in the world: the 2S4 “Tulip” Tjulpan. The tank was supposed to fire its 24-centimeter shells at Ukrainian positions up to 20 kilometers away.
But now the Ukrainian troops are said to have already destroyed the mortar again. Ironically, recordings of the Russian state television are said to have revealed the whereabouts of the vehicle. A little later, pictures of the destroyed tank appeared on social media. Shortly thereafter, the Ukrainian National Guard also released further footage intended to document the attack. You can see the vehicle on fire. “Thanks to the Russian propagandaists for the tip,” it said on Twitter.
12:13 p.m .: According to the Russian military, it bombed a military transport near Kyiv. “High-precision sea-launched missiles were used to destroy weapons and military equipment of the 10th Ukrainian mountain assault brigade from Ivano-Frankivsk near the Malyn railway station in the Zhytomyr region, which was to be transferred to Donbass,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Aug Monday at the presentation of the management report.
Ukrainian sources had reported the bombing of the small town the night before, reporting one fatality and several injuries.
Konashenkov also informed about numerous Russian rocket and air attacks in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region. There, targets in the villages of Bakhmut, Soledar, Berestowe, Lyman, Nyrkowe and Sakitne were fired upon. In addition to command posts, ammunition depots and troop concentrations, the major general also named “traffic hubs” as targets of attack. It should be the train stations in the towns.
According to Russian sources, the airstrikes killed more than 230 Ukrainian soldiers and disabled 33 military vehicles. There were also 3 fighter jets shot down by Russian air defenses and 13 drones. This information could not be verified independently.
9:50 a.m .: According to the Ukrainian general staff, there are few changes in the fighting in eastern Ukraine: the Russians are trying to defend their positions in the north of Kharkiv, and further south they are preparing a new offensive against the city of Sloviansk. When trying to take the village of Dowgenke west of the strategically important road between Izyum and Sloviansk, the Russian military was repulsed.
According to Ukrainian information, the night’s attacks in the direction of Sievjerodonetsk and Bakhmut were also unsuccessful. In the area of Avdiivka, Kurakhove, Novopavlivka and in the direction of Zaporizhia, hostilities have abated, said General Staff Spokesman Olexandr Stupun. A total of eleven enemy attacks were repelled. Because of the high losses, Russia now has to reactivate the decommissioned T-62 tanks in order to equip reserve units. The information could not be independently verified.
8:23 a.m .: The former Soviet Republic of Belarus, which has not yet actively participated in the Russian-Ukrainian war, is assembling forces at the border, according to information from Kyiv. “The Belarusian armed forces are conducting increased reconnaissance and have set up additional units in the border area,” the Ukrainian general staff said in its situation report on Monday. Accordingly, the danger of rocket and air attacks on Ukraine from Belarusian territory remains.
The Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko did not take part with his own troops in the war against Ukraine that Russia started at the end of February. However, Russian troops were allowed to use the country as a staging area for the attack. Kyiv therefore does not see Minsk as neutral and fears that Belarusian soldiers could potentially intervene in the conflict on the part of Russia. Lukashenko, who is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on Monday, has always denied such intentions.
Most recently, the Ukrainian President disclosed his own losses in mid-April. At that time he spoke of a total of around 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers who had died since the Russian attack on February 24. However, the President’s Office has refused to provide precise figures. Presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich explained that this was a war secret.
6:24 a.m .: According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, US government officials are considering sending special forces to protect the US embassy in Kyiv. These are intended to protect the security of the embassy staff who have just been sent back.
However, sending soldiers would not be a safe decision – because they would have to go to a war zone and the US has so far refused to have its own soldiers in Ukraine. The presence of strong US forces could lead Putin to launch an attack on the embassy, some Pentagon officials fear. According to the report, US President Biden has yet to decide on the plan.
Monday, May 23, 6:06 a.m.: The mayor of the small town of Enerhodar, who was deployed by the Russian occupying forces, was seriously injured in a bomb attack on Sunday. “The self-proclaimed head of Enerhodar’s ‘People’s Administration’ Andriy Shevchik was injured by an explosion at the entrance to the apartment building where his mother lives,” the Ukrainian military administration of Zaporizhia Oblast said on its Telegram channel late Sunday evening. It was a targeted partisan attack against a collaborator, it said.
According to media reports, Shevchik is in intensive care. His bodyguards were also injured in the attack. According to the Ukrainian military administration, the Russian occupying forces are now looking for two young men in a red Audi. They would also have strengthened the checkpoints. According to its own statements, the Russian investigative committee on Monday initiated criminal proceedings “for the crime of Ukrainian nationalists”.
9:39 p.m .: According to its chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky, Russia is ready to resume negotiations with Ukraine. “For our part, we are ready to continue the dialogue,” Medinsky said in an interview with Belarusian state television on Sunday. The ball is in the field of Ukraine, at whose instigation the talks were suspended. “Russia has never refused negotiations,” Medinsky said.
Talks between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators initially took place regularly after the start of Russian military action in Ukraine on February 24 – in person or via video conference. The foreign ministers of both countries met in Turkey in March for talks that remained fruitless. A meeting of delegations in Istanbul followed, which also brought no progress.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s chief negotiator and presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak said talks with Moscow were “on hold”.
4:34 p.m .: According to Ukrainian information, Russia is intensifying its airstrikes throughout Ukraine. The Russian army continues “its missile and air strikes on the entire territory” and has “increased the intensity,” the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army said on Sunday. Accordingly, Moscow is increasingly using the air force “to destroy important infrastructure”.
Local Ukrainian authorities confirmed a Russian missile attack on the village of Malyn west of Kyiv. The Ministry of Defense in Moscow said on Saturday that it had destroyed a significant western supply of weapons there with “high-precision sea-based long-range weapons”. The Ukrainian authorities, on the other hand, spoke of damage to “civilian infrastructure”. The General Staff did not provide any information on a delivery of weapons that had been fired upon.
In the eastern Donbass region, after taking the port city of Mariupol completely, Russian troops are now apparently trying to capture the last Ukrainian positions as well. In the Luhansk region, only the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, separated by a river, are now controlled by Ukraine. According to experts, Severodonetsk is at risk of being completely surrounded and besieged by Russian troops.
2:34 p.m .: Russian troops attacked the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievjerodonetsk from several directions at night, according to the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday. However, they were pushed back to their former positions.
The attack on Seyerodonetsk is part of the Russian offensive along the line of contact between Russian and Ukrainian forces, according to the Ukrainian military general staff. “Enemy forces are preparing to continue their offensive towards Sloviansk.”
Sieverodonetsk and Sloviansk are considered key to controlling the Luhansk region of Ukraine. Parts of Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk have been controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
