19th April, 2022
Russian invading forces have taken control of the city of Kreminna in eastern Ukraine and Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from the city, the regional governor said on Tuesday.
“Kreminna is under the control of the ‘Orcs’ (Russians).
“They have entered the city,” Serhiy Haidai, the military governor of the Luhansk region, told a briefing.
Troops battled in the streets of Kreminna on Monday before Russia was able to gain control of the city, Haidai said.
Haidai said that before advancing, Russian forces “just started levelling everything to the ground.”
He said his forces retreated to regroup and keep fighting.
The breakthrough at Kreminna brings the Russians closer to the city of Slovyansk, which is seen as a key target in the Russian offensive.
Slovyansk was seized by pro-Russian fighters in 2014, only to be retaken by Ukrainian forces months later following intense fighting.
Russian troops have already seized the city of Izyum, which sits along a highway north of Slovyansk, and they are poised to push toward the city from the north and the east.
Slovyansk lies just north of another key city, Kramatorsk, where an earlier Russian attack on a train station killed more than 50 people.
On Monday morning, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, told Ukrainian media that the defensive line had not been broken elsewhere.
“Fortunately, our military is holding out,” Danilov said.
In Mariupol, Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard, said in a video message that Russia had begun dropping bunker-buster bombs on the Azovstal steel plant where the regiment was holding out.
The sprawling plant contains a warren of tunnels where both fighters and civilians are sheltering. It is believed to be the last major pocket of resistance in the shattered city.
Russia has Mariupol surrounded and has been fighting a bloody battle to seize it.
If Russia takes Mariupol, it would free up troops for use elsewhere in the Donbas, deprive Ukraine of a vital port, and complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, seized from Ukraine from 2014.