Kyiv, MOSCOW – Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine, especially in the Lugansk region, forced Kyiv on Wednesday to cut off a third of Russian gas transit to Europe, while in the Donetsk region authorities warned of the risk of death of thousands of citizens in Mariupol by the end of the year.

Deputy Chief of the Main Operations Department of the General Staff of Ukraine, Brigadier General Aleksey Gromov, noted that the Ukrainian forces have stopped a large-scale offensive by the Russians in the Kharkiv and Izium region, where the Kyiv troops recently destroyed a Russian command.

The General Staff announced on Tuesday the liberation of several towns north and northeast of the city of Kharkiv.

WARN OF THOUSANDS OF DEATHS BY YEAR’S END IN MARIUPOL

According to the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) on Wednesday, “the Ukrainian military offensive probably reached 7 miles from the Russian border.”

According to Gromov, now Russia is no longer inoffensive but in defensive mode in those directions and is transferring its forces toward Luhansk.

Russia claimed in turn on Tuesday to have already reached the administrative border controlled by Kyiv in the Lugansk region after taking over the town of Popasna, although the governor of the territory, Serhiy Gaidai, described this statement as “fantasy”.

The Ukrainian representative noted that it is currently impossible to evacuate the 40,000 citizens who remain in the territory under Ukrainian control.

Residents there have been left “without electricity, water, gas or mobile communication” due to constant Russian attacks.

The head of the Civil and Military Administration of the city of Severodonetsk, Oleksandr Stryuk, noted that in recent days the number of attacks has increased significantly and that 30% of the buildings in the city are no longer inhabitable.

The operator of Ukraine’s gas systems, GTSOU, had to cut off on Wednesday due to “force majeure” the transit of Russian gas to Europe through the Sokhranivka metering point and the Novopskov compression station, in the occupied territory of Lugansk.

Through Novopskov, up to 1.13 billion cubic feet of Russian fuel were transported daily to Europe, almost a third of the total.

Ukraine, however, confirmed that it can transfer gas transit to the Sudzha metering point in a volume of 800 million cubic feet per day.

The European Commission (EC) considered that the cut does not generate “any immediate problem for the security of supply.”

In the Donetsk region, Russian forces shell the entire front line “day and night”, according to Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

The Russian troops are trying to descend from Liman, in the north, towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the military center of the Ukrainian forces and where the fighting is “constant”.

In Sloviansk, Russia shelled two districts on Wednesday, according to the head of the city’s Military-Civil Administration, Vadym Lyakh.

Further south, in Mariupol, the situation in the city controlled by Russia since the end of April remains dramatic.

The mayor of the port city, Vadym Boychenko, pointed out that “by the end of the year more than 10,000 people may die from diseases and intolerable conditions in Mariupol”, which already has only between 150,000 and 170,000 inhabitants, three times less than before the war and that they must be evacuated in their entirety, he insisted.

His adviser, Petró Andryushchenko, affirmed in turn that “if there is hell on earth, it is in the Azovstal plant”, which is attacked “not only from the sky and with artillery but again with tanks that try to open He passed”.

The leader of the self-proclaimed republic of Donetsk, Denís Pushilin, maintained that there are no civilians left in the metallurgical company’s territory after a complicated UN and Red Cross operation last week to remove them from the factory.

Andryushchenko believes, however, that “more than a hundred civilians remain” in the steel plant, while Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk indicated that there were also “hundreds of wounded.”

Both the pro-Russian and Kyiv estimate that there are still more than a thousand Ukrainian soldiers in the steelworks.

The wives of two Azov battalion officers expressed their desire on Wednesday that their meeting with Pope Francis in Rome would serve to save the lives of the soldiers, who, they assured, are willing to be evacuated.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Maltese parliament on Tuesday that “Russia has not yet accepted any of the many options proposed to bail them out.”

In the south, in the Kherson region, under Russian control, the pro-Russian authorities imposed by Moscow, explained that they are going ahead with the Russification of the area, not only with the introduction of the ruble and the opening of a Russian bank.

They also intend to send an appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to include the territory in a “full-fledged province of Russia,” said Kiril Stremoúsov, deputy head of the Kherson Civil and Military Administration, according to RIA Novosti.

The Kremlin stressed that this “must be decided by the inhabitants of that territory”, while the advisor to the Ukrainian Presidency Mykhailo Podolyak assured that this plan will come to nothing since the Ukrainian Army “will liberate” Kherson.