As Russian forces battled on Wednesday to tighten the noose around the twin cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, Ukrainian forces in Sievierodonetsk appeared to be largely confined to an industrial corner of the ruined city, with some units now in bunkers beneath a Soviet-era chemical factory.
Britain’s military intelligence agency estimated that “several hundred” civilians were also seeking shelter inside the factory, the Azot plant, in a development that was certain to draw comparisons with the steel plant in Mariupol where thousands of civilians and fighters held out for weeks. Serhiy Haidai, the head of the Luhansk military administration, said that Russian forces were using artillery fire to pound the Sievierodonetsk plant, which before the war was Ukraine’s third largest producer of ammonia. Read more
@nytimes