Desperately bloody fights for Luhansk region

UKRAINE - In Brief 23 May 2022 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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Over the last two weeks we observed the most desperate fights in Luhansk region (North part of Donbas). Russian leadership apparently disappointed with 'no result' by May 9th amid failed ‘big battle for Donbas’ decided to get at least something in this war. They defined, as we already see, occupation of Luhansk region in its administrative borders as the key political target. In this case with totally occupied Luhansk region Kremlin could announce a kind of victory of the ‘first stage of military operation’ thus a bit improving its appearance in the eyes of Russians. To completed this task, they need to capture two big cities Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk (see the map below). As the first stage of this plan Russians started massive crossing of Siversky Donets river near Belohorovka on May 8th (see the map below). The battle was running until May 14th and ended with a complete elimination of two Russian battalions (so called Battalion Tactical Groups (BTG)) which lost near 90% of its personnel in this operation. According to Ukrainian servicemen the howitzers M777 our western partners supplied played an important role in this battle. You can see the result of the howitzers’ work at this video. However, huge losses Russian experienced in this battle did not stop Russian leadership from new attacks. On May 18th we learned that Russians broke the frontline near Popasna (see the map below) after increasing concentration of military forces up to 25 BTGs in this area (BTG might include from 500 up to 1500 soldiers). For several days we received extremely worrisome reports from the frontline as Russians had been successfully unfolding the offensive bringing more and more rese...