The Guardian reports:

The besieged Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk appears to be almost completely surrounded by attacking Russian forces, as the Kremlin continued to make incremental gains in its offensive in the Donbas region, backed by withering shell fire.

“The Russians are pounding residential neighbourhoods relentlessly,” regional governor, Serhiy Haidai, wrote in a Telegram post on Friday. “The residents of Sievierodonetsk have forgotten when was the last time there was silence in the city for at least half an hour.”

As the cities of Kharkiv to the north and Dnipro to the south also came under attack, analysts said the main Russian effort appeared still to be focused to the east, while Russian attacks elsewhere appeared to be aimed at consolidating their positions and tying down Ukrainian defenders who could otherwise be redeployed.

Underlining the state of the fighting in Donbas, the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, who has cast himself as one of Ukraine’s most vocal cheerleaders, said Russia was making slow but “palpable progress”, as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, accused the Kremlin of carrying out a “genocide” in the country’s east.

Ukraine’s foreign minister also offered a bleak assessment. “The military situation in eastern Ukraine is even worse than people say it is and the country needs heavy weapons now to effectively fight Russia,” Dmytro Kuleba said. [Continue reading…]