A ferocious battle is under way between Russian and Ukrainian forces in Izyum, the gateway to the Donbas region.
Over the course of three and a half weeks the eastern city of 50,000 people has been cut off from the world and become an urban battlefield akin to the besieged port of Mariupol in the south or the encircled city of Chernihiv in the north. The deputy mayor has described Izyum as “hell”.
Officials say the humanitarian situation is dire, with no heating, water or electricity and civilians being buried in parks. Valerii Marchenko, the mayor of Izyum, estimates that 20,000 people remain in the city.
Moscow claimed victory in Izyum last week, saying it had “completely taken control” of the city. However, western officials have said in recent days that Ukrainian forces remain encamped on the south bank of the Donets river, holding off the Russian assault from the north.
The Kremlin has announced the second phase of its operation to “demilitarise and denazify” Ukraine with a renewed emphasis on capturing Luhansk and Donetsk, two separatist regions in the east of the country where fighting has been going on since the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
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Izyum is sandwiched on the edge of Ukrainian-controlled territory between one Russian grouping pushing southeast from Kharkiv and another pushing northwest from Luhansk. The two groupings are attempting to link up, but Ukrainian forces have dug in at Izyum, destroying bridges over the Donets river.
Western officials have said the Kremlin’s failure to capture Izyum and rebuild the destroyed bridges is indicative of the wider logistical problems that have plagued the Russian military since the outset of the war.
The Kremlin’s plan to encircle and capture the Donbas will be a challenge given that the performance of the Russian military on offensive manoeuvres has been “not spectacular”, one official said this week.
“It’s an easy thing to draw some arrows on a map and write the word ‘envelop’ on it. It’s a fundamentally different thing to have to try and achieve that on the ground,” the official said.
The Ukrainian defence ministry has blamed a pro-Kremlin local politician for guiding the Russian forces into the city. Anatoliy Fomychevskyi, is a member of Izyum’s city council who represents Platform for Life, a pro-Russian party.
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He has been charged with treason by the Ukrainian government after he escorted the invading forces down an unprotected road into the centre of the city.
The Russian defence ministry has deployed 1,000 battle-hardened mercenaries from the Wagner Group to the Donbas, according to western intelligence but the Ukrainian units fighting in the area are themselves among the most fearsome at Kyiv’s disposal, having been involved in battles for eight years.
Russian troops from the 20th Combined Arms Army and the 1st Guards Tank Army are also being redeployed to Izyum to finally crush the Ukrainian resistance, the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, has said, but images shared on social media continue to show the husks of burnt-out Russian tanks.
Volodymyr Matsokin, the deputy mayor of Izyum, compared the city’s plight to Mariupol.
“It’s hell, but Ukrainian forces are fighting back,” he told Radio Svoboda. “The whole world is talking about Maiupol. That’s understandable and right. But our situation is no better. We have not had electricity, water, gas or heating for three and a half weeks. There’s no communications and no medicine. There are no humanitarian corridors. The hospital is not working — people are dying because it’s impossible to treat them. The whole picture is appalling, people are being buried in parks, in gardens, in front of buildings.”
