Ukraine claims Russia attacked 41 regions across Donbass on May 25, killed 6 & injured 12

Ukraine's Joint Task Forces claimed on Wednesday, May 25, that shelling by Russian troops in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions killed six people and injured 12 others. Russian forces shelled more than 40 towns in Ukraine's eastern Donbass region, according to the Ukrainian military, threatening to cut off the last major escape route for civilians trapped in the war-hit regions. According to a Facebook post by the Joint Task Force of Ukraine's Armed Forces, Russian troops shelled 41 settlements in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The post read, "The occupiers shelled more than 40 towns in Donetsk and Luhansk region, destroying or damaging 47 civilian sites including 38 homes and a school. As a result of this shelling, five civilians died and 12 were wounded. The enemy destroyed and damaged 52 multi-storey and private residential buildings, other civilian properties, secondary school, the house of culture of the health institution, the building of recreation base and railway canvas."

Notably, Russia has deployed thousands of troops in the region, attacking from three directions in an attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces in Severodonetsk and its twin Lysychansk. Their defeat would hand over control of the entire province of Luhansk to Russia, a key Kremlin war goal. 

Furthermore, according to the governor of the Luhansk region, police are temporarily burying people in mass graves and relatives will be able to retrieve their loved ones' corpses after the war. According to Serhiy Haidai, police buried 150 people in one mass grave in Lysychansk.

Taking to Telegram, the Luhansk governor stated, "After the war, relatives can be reburied. Police are issuing documents to the relatives of the victims, which will later provide the opportunity to obtain death certificates."

Russia-Ukraine War

After failing to seize Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, or its second-largest city, Kharkiv, Russia is attempting to seize complete control of the Donbas, which comprises two eastern provinces claimed by the Kremlin on behalf of separatists. Embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy slammed suggestions that Kyiv should give up territory and make concessions to Russia in order to end the war, comparing the idea to attempts to appease Nazi Germany in 1938.

In response to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's suggestion that Ukraine should allow Russia to keep Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, Zelenskyy stated, "You get the impression that Mr Kissinger doesn’t have 2022 on his calendar, but 1938, and that he thinks he is talking to an audience not in Davos but in Munich back then."

(With agency inputs)

Image: AP