Russia Ukraine forces pushed back from key city

By our Special Correspondent

Ukraine on Monday said it was pushing its forces out of the center of the key industrial city of Severodonetsk, where President Volodymyr Zhelensky described the struggle for "literally every meter".

The cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, separated by the river, were targeted for weeks as the last areas still under Ukrainian control in the eastern Lugansk region.

Regional Governor Sergei Guide said Russian forces were "gathering more and more equipment" to encircle Severodonetsk. Moscow forces "pushed our units out of the center and continued to destroy our city," he said.

Edward Basurin, a spokesman for pro-Russian separatists, said Severodonetsk was "virtually" blocked after Russian forces blew up the "last" bridge connecting Lychishansk‌ on Sunday. Ukrainian forces in the region have two options, "to surrender or to die," he said.

The capture of Severodonetsk in an attempt to occupy the whole of the Donbass, mainly Russian - speaking area under the Kremlin’s pro - separatists since 2014 opens the way for Moscow to Sloviansk and another major city, Kramatorsk.

Zhelensky said in a message that Ukrainian forces were fighting for "every town and village where the invaders came", marking the eighth anniversary of the liberation of Mariupol in the previous conflict.

In May, Russian forces captured a port city in southern Ukraine after weeks of siege. "We are fighting for it once again and for the whole of Ukraine," Zhelensky said.

‘War crimes’

On Monday, Amnesty International accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine, with attacks on the northeastern city of Kharkiv - many of which use banned cluster munitions - killing hundreds of civilians.

"Repeated bombings of residential areas in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks that kill and injure hundreds of civilians and create war crimes," the rights group said in a report on Ukraine's second-largest city. In a town called Bucha, near Kyiv, which is synonymous with war crimes charges, local police said they found seven more bodies in the grave on Monday.

"Many of the victims were handcuffed and had their knees tied," Kyiv regional police chief Andrei Nebitov said on Facebook. Dozens of civilian bodies were found in the town in April after Russian troops withdrew from the area after a month-long occupation.

Elsewhere in northern Ukraine on Monday, Russian rocket strikes hit the town of Pryluky, local authorities said.

Pryluky, which lies about 150 kilometers (90 miles) east of the capital, is home to a military airfield.

In Lysychansk, Russian bombardments killed three civilians in the last 24 hours, including a six-year-old boy, Lugansk governor Gaiday said.

While in the city of Donetsk, separatist officials said three people were killed and four wounded in a Ukrainian shelling on a market in the city's Budonivsky district.

Russia's invasion of its neighbors Finland and Sweden have abandoned decades of military non-alignment and sought to join the NATO alliance.

In terms of security, Sweden "is in a better position now than it was before," NATO chief Jens Stoltenzberg said Monday, but its application is currently in a state of disarray as Turkey withholds its approval.