LYMAN, Ukraine (AP) — The bodies of Russian soldiers were lying in the streets of a key eastern Ukrainian city on Tuesday, evidence of a hasty retreat that marked a new military defeat for Moscow as it struggles to hang on to areas it illegally annexed last week.
Russia’s upper house of parliament rubber-stamped the annexation of four Ukrainian regions on Tuesday, following “referendums” that Ukraine and its Western allies dismissed as illegal and fraudulent.
Responding to the annexation move, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has formally ruled out talks with Russia. Zelenskyy’s decree released Tuesday declares that holding negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin has become impossible after his decision to take over the four regions of Ukraine.
The Kremlin responded to the Ukrainian president’s decree by saying that it will wait for Ukraine to agree to sit down for talks on ending the conflict, noting that it may not happen until a new Ukrainian president takes office.
“We will wait for the incumbent president to change his position or wait for a future Ukrainian president who would revise his stand in the interests of the Ukrainian people,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Despite the Kremlin’s apparent political bravado, the picture on the ground underscored the disarray Putin faces in his response to Ukrainian advances and attempts to establish new Russian borders.
Over the weekend, Russian troops pulled back from Lyman, a strategic eastern city that the Russians had used as a key logistics and transport hub, to avoid being encircled by Ukrainian forces. The city’s liberation gave Ukraine a key vantage point for pressing its offensive deeper into Russian-held territories.
Two days later, the bodies of Russian soldiers were still on the ground. The Ukrainian military appeared to have collected the bodies of their comrades after fierce battles for control of Lyman, but didn’t immediately remove those of the Russians.
“We fight for our land, for our children, so that our people can live better, but all this comes at a very high price,” said a Ukrainian soldier who goes by the nom de guerre Rud.
Lyman residents emerged from basements where they had hidden during the battle for control of the city and built bonfires for cooking. The city has had no water, electricity or gas since May. Residential buildings were burned. A few residents emerged on bicycles.
An 85-year-old, who identified herself by her name and patronymic, Valentyna Kuzmychna, recalled a recent explosion nearby.
“I was standing in the hall, about five meters away, when it boomed,” she said. “God forbid, now I can’t hear well.”
The Russian forces launched more missile strikes at Ukrainian cities on Tuesday as Ukrainian forces pressed their counteroffensives in the east and the south.
Several missiles hit Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, damaging its infrastructure and causing power cuts. Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said one person was killed and at least two others, including a 9-year-old girl, were wounded.
In the south, four civilians were wounded when Russian missiles struck the city of Nikopol.
After reclaiming control of Lyman in the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian forces pushed further east and may have gone as far as the border of the neighboring Luhansk region as they advance toward Kreminna, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in its latest analysis of the combat situation.
On Monday, Ukrainian forces also scored significant gains in the south, raising flags over the villages of Arkhanhelske, Myroliubivka, Khreshchenivka, Mykhalivka and Novovorontsovka.
Despite the latest military gains, Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Yevhen Perebyinis called for the deployment of more weapons to Ukraine following the partial mobilization announcement by Russia last month.
In a video address to a conference in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Russia’s war against Ukraine on Tuesday, Perebyinis said the additional weapons wouldn’t lead to an escalation but help to end the war sooner.
“We need additional long-range artillery and ammunition, combat aircrafts, and armed vehicles to continue the liberation of the occupied territories,” the deputy minister said. “We need anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems to secure our civilians and critical infrastructure from the terrorist attacks on the Russian forces.”
The Ukrainian successes in the east and the south came even as Russia moved to absorb four Ukrainian regions amid the fighting there.
The upper house of Russian parliament, the Federation Council, voted Tuesday to ratify treaties to make the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions part of Russia.
The lower house had quickly rubber-stamped the accession pacts after last week’s Kremlin-orchestrated annexation “referendums” that Ukraine and its Western allies have dismissed as illegal and fraudulent.
Putin is expected to quickly endorse the annexation treaties.
Russia’s moves to incorporate the Ukrainian regions have been done so hastily that even the exact borders of the territories being absorbed were unclear.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Donetsk and Luhansk are joining Russia with the same administrative borders that existed before a conflict erupted there in 2014 between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces. He said the borders of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are still undecided.
But a senior Russian lawmaker offered a different view. Pavel Krasheninnikov said Zaporizhzhia will be absorbed within its “administrative borders,” meaning Moscow plans to incorporate parts of the region still under Kyiv’s control. He said similar logic will apply to Kherson, but that Russia will include two districts of the neighboring Mykolaiv region that are now occupied by Russia.
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Adam Schreck reported from Kyiv.
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