Moscow planning more assaults as US gives annexation caution

By Our Special Correspondent

Russia on Monday launched a fresh assault on the critical Ukrainian port of Odessa as the United States warned that Moscow was preparing formally to annex embattled regions in the east.

The new heavy fighting came as the European Union said it was bracing for a complete end to Russian gas supplies with the bloc preparing another package of sanctions sure to anger President Vladimir Putin.

After failing to take the capital Kyiv, Moscow has shifted its two-month-old invasion to largely Russian-speaking areas and has stepped up pressure on Odessa, a celebrated cultural hub that is a crucial port on the Black Sea. Odessa’s city council said that a Russian strike hit a residential building housing five people. A 15-year-old boy was killed and a girl was hospitalized, the council said on Telegram.

For what? What did these children… threaten the Russian state with? And that’s how they fight. That’s all, he said.

Fighting was particularly intense in eastern Ukraine around Izyum, Lyman and Rubizhne as the Russians prepared an attack on Severodonetsk, the farthest city still under Kyiv's control, Ukraine's general staff said. The governor of the eastern region of Lugansk expected more intense battles ahead of May 9, the day Russia annually celebrates the 1945 surrender of Nazi Germany to allied forces, including the then Soviet Union. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, however, told Italian television that Moscow's forces "will not artificially adjust their actions to any date, including Victory Day". Pro-Russian separatists in the two regions declared independence in 2014 but Moscow has so far stopped short of formally incorporating them as it did that year with the Crimean peninsula, which it seized through special forces in unmarked uniforms.

Russia plans to engineer referenda upon joining sometime in mid-may said Michael Carpenter. The US ambassador to the organization for security and Co-operation in Europe.