KYIV/NIU-YORK, Ukraine—Ukraine ignored a Russian ultimatum to surrender the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk on June 15 as Washington urged NATO defense ministers weighing more military support for Kyiv to not lose focus, saying the stakes were too high.
Sievierodonetsk, now largely in ruins, has been the main focal point of the war for weeks. Russia told Ukrainian forces holed up in a chemical plant there to stop “senseless resistance and lay down arms” on the morning of June 15, pressing its advantage in the battle for control of eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine says more than 500 civilians, including 40 children, remain alongside soldiers inside the Azot chemical factory, sheltering from Russian bombardment.
The mayor of Sievierodonetsk, Oleksandr Stryuk, said Russian forces were trying to storm the city from several directions, but the Ukrainians were continuing to defend it and weren’t totally cut off, even though all its river bridges had been destroyed.
Moscow had said it would let civilians evacuate from the plant on June 15, but Russian-backed separatists said Ukrainian shelling had scuppered the plan, which would have involved taking people out toward a territory they control.
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the Luhansk region containing Sievierodonetsk, said Ukraine’s army continued to defend the city and stop Russian forces from taking its twin city, Lysychansk, on the opposite bank of the Siverskyi Donets river.
“Nevertheless, the Russians are close and the population is suffering and homes are being destroyed,” Gaidai wrote online just before Russia’s 8 a.m. Moscow time (0500 GMT) deadline.
Reuters couldn’t immediately verify the battlefield accounts.
Luhansk is one of two eastern provinces that Moscow claims on behalf of separatist proxies. Together they make up the Donbas, an industrial Ukrainian region where Russia has focused its assault.
Addressing dozens of NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels to debate their next moves, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the invasion was at a “pivotal moment.”
Echoes of Mariupol
The Azot bombardment echoes the earlier siege of the Azovstal steelworks in the southern port of Mariupol, Ukraine, where hundreds of fighters and civilians took shelter from Russian shelling. Those inside the facility surrendered in mid-May and were taken into Russian custody.
The sprawling ammonia factory in Sievierodonetsk was founded under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Those inside were surviving on water from wells and supplies of food brought in, the mayor said, but the situation was critical.
British intelligence said the fighters could survive underground, and Russian forces would likely remain focused on them, keeping them from attacking elsewhere. But Ukrainian forces on the eastern front were exhausted and outnumbered, according to UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace.
Kyiv has said that 100 to 200 of its soldiers were being killed every day, with hundreds more being wounded in some of the bloodiest fighting since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.
Western countries have promised NATO-standard weapons—including advanced U.S. rockets. But deploying them is taking time, and Zelenskyy said Ukraine didn’t have enough anti-missile systems and that there was no justification for delays.
His adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said the defenders of Sievierodonetsk wanted to know when the weapons would arrive.
“Brussels, we are waiting for a decision,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance was “extremely focused on stepping up support” for Ukraine. The gathering in Brussels is the third time the group of nearly 50 countries is meeting to coordinate help for Kyiv.
In May, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to provide $40 billion in additional aid to Ukraine and has promised longer-range rocket systems, drones, and advanced artillery.
Elsewhere in the Donbas, Ukraine says Russia plans to attack Sloviansk from the north and along a front near Bakhmut to the south. The sound of shelling could be heard 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Bakhmut near the town of Niu-York, where Ukrainian forces said Russia was throwing everything into the battle.
