Russian Federation (RF) attacks are grinding ahead at multiple locations along the 500+ kilometer front in the Donbas region, with Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF) units claiming they are inflicting serious losses on RF tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and soldiers, news and official reports said Monday, May 2.
A Ukraine Army General Staff (AGS) situation report published on Sunday, May 1, said RF attacks aimed at gaining ground for eventual breakthroughs to the key objective towns of Slovyansk and Severodonetsk continued over the weekend without meaningful progress. RF control of the two strategically-important population, road and rail centers could cut off as many as five UAF combat brigades currently holding positions in east Donbas.
The northern wave of attacks aiming toward Slovyansk, the statement and news reports said, centered over the weekend around the town of Lyman and crossings over the Siverny Donets River. According to the AGS the UAF was holding its positions. State media outlets reported that Kremlin forces made limited advances. Social media showed images of civilian houses in Lyman damaged by artillery fire.
The eastern assaults aimed in the direction of Severodonetsk, as has been the case for more than two weeks, triggered renewed bitter street-fighting in the towns of Popasna and Rubizhne. According to the AGS Ukrainian units made limited withdrawals while inflicting heavy casualties on attackers. RF state media said infantry from the RF and raised locally in Donetsk and Luhansk Regions was making good progress. UAF units have held positions in this sector practically unchanged since the start of the war.
A clash also was reported near Barvenkovo, a Kharkiv region town, west of the Donbas line of contact. It was not clear from news and official reports the size of forces involved, or the outcome of the engagement.
RF state-controlled media were silent on casualties suffered by RF forces but claimed without offering evidence that many UAF units were demoralized – a claim absolutely rejected by all Ukrainian sources, official and otherwise.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional defense command, in a May 2 statement said: “attacks are taking place all across the line of contact” and that UAF units in Donbas battles on Sunday, May 1 had repelled 10 separate RF assaults. He said RF losses in infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, and trucks were particularly heavy and that “UAF units are holding their positions at all locations, and the enemy cannot advance.”
A May 1 Ukraine Defense Ministry statement likewise claimed RF units were suffering heavy casualties, particularly from UAF artillery. RF authorities were struggling to cope with wounded RF soldiers, the report said, have taken over the hospital in the occupied town of Balakliya and filled it to capacity with wounded, and evicted civilians from a tuberculosis clinic in the town of Vovchansk to make space for injured RF soldiers.
According to the AGS, overall fighting intensity and counts of RF destroyed equipment spiked dramatically over the weekend, with UAF units claiming they knocked out or captured 22 RF tanks, 48 RF infantry fighting vehicles, 8 RF artillery systems, and 28 RF trucks. On April 29-30 daily kill claims had been roughly half of Sunday’s. AF kill claims, and on April 24, the Sunday previous to May 1, were almost five times smaller.
Journalist Yuriy Butusov, director of the authoritative censor.net news platform, seemed to give some credence to the UAF claims of serious casualties suffered by RF units attempting to advance. According to a Butusov’s post-combat report, UAF forces in weekend fighting in Luhansk Region ambushed and nearly totally annihilated an assault group from the RF state-run mercenary corporation Wagner.
The unit, recruited primarily from former RF service personnel with combat experience in Syria, was according to Butusov caught out in the open by UAF defenders who used artillery and direct fire weapons to inflict what he described as “dozens” of casualties.
UAF soldiers subsequently captured seven RF POWs and an unspecified number of Tiger armored cars, as well as documents showing the unit entered combat on April 20 with 400 men. Following 10 days of battles the Wagner unit was at less than half strength, Butusov said, citing captured documents and interviews with POWs as evidence.
