Serhiy Haidai, governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk administrative region, said on Friday in a Telegram post that Ukrainian troops had successfully attacked the Russian base installed in a hotel in the occupied city of Kadiivka. Haidai’s claim of victory comes as Russia’s advance into Ukraine’s eastern regions has reportedly stalled as the conflict enters six months. The Ukrainian military has been fighting Kremlin-backed separatists in Luhansk and the nearby Donetsk administrative region since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. The post by Haidai, whose governor makes him the military leader for the region, included images of a war-torn building he said the Russian military had been using as a base since 2014. Ukrainian soldiers load a Grad BM-21 multiple rocket launcher on the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region on July 19, 2022. A Ukrainian regional governor said on Friday that the country’s military attacked a Russian base in a nearby town and “eliminated” 200 airmen. Anatolii Stepanov/Getty Images Russian forces in the spring turned their war effort to Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region after failing to capture Kyiv, the country’s capital. As fighting intensified in the region, Haidai reported in June that Ukraine’s military destroyed a base in Kadiivka used by the Russian mercenary Group Wagner. While Russia seized control of key cities in the region over the summer, the Kremlin said more recently that it was slowing its offensive to reduce the civilian toll. The explanation was met with skepticism by Ukrainian officials and their Western allies, who suspected that the reason was the heavy losses suffered by the Russian military. “The offensive in Donbass is making little progress and Russia expects a major Ukrainian counteroffensive,” the UK Ministry of Defense tweeted on Tuesday, providing an update on the situation in Ukraine. “Operationally, Russia suffers from shortages in ammunition, vehicles and personnel.” The US-based Institute for the Study of War published research on Thursday, citing Ukrainian sources, that Russian forces had carried out “limited ground attacks” near the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk. Russian forces also moved forward with ground offensives near the eastern Ukrainian towns of Bakhmut and Donetsk City, according to the think tank. The Kremlin also repeated accusations against Ukraine that it had targeted civilians in the region. Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement on Wednesday that Ukraine’s “criminal shelling” of Donbas continued unabated, with around 100 civilians killed in the past month. Mikhail Mizinchev, head of Russia’s National Defense Management Center, told Russian state news agency TASS on Friday that more than 24,000 people had been evacuated from Luhansk and Donetsk. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.
