Ruminations: Temporarily Down But Not Out

"They have received an order to do so [retreat]."

"Remaining in positions that have been relentlessly shelled for months just doesn't make sense."

"[The city has been] nearly turned to rubble [by continual bombardment]."
"All critical infrastructure has been destroyed. Ninety percent of the city is damaged, 80% [of] houses will have to be demolished."
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidal

"[While the loss of Sievierodonetsk represented a loss of terrain for Ukraine, it was not a] major turning point in the war [nor a] decisive Russian victory."
"Ukrainian troops have succeeded for weeks in drawing substantial quantities of Russian personnel, weapons and equipment into the area and have likely degraded Russian forces’ overall capabilities."
Analysts, Institute for the Study of War

A local man on a street in Sievierodonetsk on June 23, 2022. Alexander Reka/TASS

Ukrainian forces have received an order to begin a retreat from Sievierodonetsk, administrative centre of the Luhansk region. The plan is to preserve their lives under the heavy Russian bombardment, and to move to a another position that can offer a reprieve while enabling them to continue their offence against the Russian military invasion. Holding out against the enemy from the besieged, destroyed city is not seen at this point to be of any benefit in a situation where Ukrainian fighters are held in a Russian grip strangling their efforts to move out the remnants of civilian presence and the military wounded, while restocking ammunition and supplies.

Most of the industrial city has been reduced to rubble, its one-time population of 100,000 shrunk to 10,000 civilians. Ukrainian troops had initially retreated to the Azot chemical factory on the outskirts of the city where they had a level of protection from the relentless Russian artillery fire, within the huge factory's sprawling underground structure where hundreds of civilians also found refuge. Before that move, they were fighting the Russian invaders in house-to-house battles.

The Russian forces vastly out-number those of the Ukrainians by ten to one, matching the endless arsenals at their disposal in comparison to those being used by the Ukrainians, far less technologically advanced and far less numerous. Gains were made around Sievierodonetsk and the neighbouring city of Lysychansk by Russian forces in their scheme to encircle Ukrainian forces. Those two cities represent the last major areas of Ukrainian resistance in the embattled Luhansk region. Local separatist forces and Russian military hold 95 percent control of the region now.

Roughly half of the Donetsk region is also under Russian and their separatist allies' control. Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, the industrial heartland of Ukraine, representing the entirety of the Donbas region. To enable it to bludgeon Sievierodonetsk in a war of attrition, Russia used its highest troop and weapons numbers in contrast to Ukraine's meagre resources, leading it to beseech its backers and patrons for more effectively dynamic weapons to give it a fighting chance to push back Russian troops and reclaim its territory.

The city's bridges were destroyed, hampering the ability of the Ukrainian military to resupply, reinforce and evacuate the wounded and others from the embattled city. Electricity, water and communications infrastructure was all destroyed by the Russian military in a plan to squeeze the city's defenders past the point where they could remain defensively functional.

The aim in the evacuation orders for Ukrainian troops to withdraw was in prevention of larger losses, while the forces moved on to more fortified positions. The larger strategy is to keep Russian forces pinned down in a small area. Even so, some Ukrainian troops remain in Sieierodonetsk in the face of massive Russian bombardment. Should Russian troops move in to secure the city for its planned takeover of Donetsk, it will be inheriting a hollow victory in the reality of complete destruction.

And while, as Governor Haidal observed, the Russians are advancing toward Lysychansk, with Russian reconnaissance units conducting forays on the edges of the city, they were driven out by its defenders. Ukrainian military analyst Oleg Zhdanov noted some of the Ukrainian troops leaving Sievierodonetsk are marching toward the conflict in Lysychansk.