Fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas on Tuesday, May 24 centered on grinding battles for control of a key Ukrainian supply line, with heavy artillery exchanges and but little troop movement on the ground, news reports and official statements aid.
A morning situation report from Ukraine’s Army General Staff (AGS) said that defenders of Ukrainian positions in the north of the town Severodonetsk, and to the east of the town Popasna, was “very serious,” but that Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF) positions were holding.
A from-the-field report by Yury Butusov, a combat correspondent and operator of the market-leading censor.net news website, said that a critical road used by the UAF for supply runs between Severodonetsk and the UAF logistics hub Bakhmut was under nearly continuous Russian Federation artillery fire.
UAF artillery was present in strength a laying down curtain fire to block RF advances, and UAF defenses through stretched were still battle-worthy, Butusov reported.
RF units were pressing to cut the Bakhmut-Severodonetsk road at three villages – Yakolivka, Belohorodivka and Berestoho – but were not able to advance against heavy UAF shelling, he said.
RF units were hitting the Bakhmut-Severodonetsk road with artillery, mortars and rocket artillery, and at some locations with air strikes, Butusov said.
The pro-Russia Readovka news platform claimed that RF assault forces, backed by heavy bombardments, had broken into the town Chervony Lyman, and the villages Toshkivka and Kamyshevakha. RF forces could physically block the Bakhmut-Severodonetsk road in the next few days, the agency predicted.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a May 23 evening television broadcast said that fighting around Severodonetsk and Popasna had entered a new, more intense phase. RF forces lack the troops to make full-blown ground attacks, so the Kremlin is now using the tactic of massed artillery strikes against civilian homes and businesses, to flatten built-up areas used by the UAF to defend from, he claimed.
UAF units were fighting well, but the RF firepower advantage was substantial, and RF heavy weapons like artillery, tanks and infantry fighting vehicles outnumber UAF units in the Donbas sector by as much as twenty to one, Zelensky said.
Serhiy Haidai, head of the Luhansk defense administration, in a May 24 statement said that Ukrainian arm intelligence has estimated the RF has concentrated around 12,000 soldiers in 25 battalion tactical groups with the objectives of capturing the towns Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, and outlying villages, and encircling UAF units.
“The situation is extremely complicated,” Haidai said. “The Russians are trying to surround our troops. They aren’t succeeding so far, but the battle is very serious and it is continuing right now.”
A May 24 intelligence update made public by the British Ministry of Defense said “There has been strong Ukrainian resistance with forces’ occupying well dug-in defensive positions. Ukraine’s long-established Joint Force Operation (UAF forces deployed in Donbas) likely retains effective command and control of this front., Russia has, however, achieved some localised success, due in part to concentrating artillery units.”
