Sievierodonetsk and the war's widening pressure points

What did the situation look like on 28 May 2022, as fighting in eastern Ukraine intensified while the pressure on Russia spread to the skies and the seas? The picture was one of a hard battle in Luhansk Oblast and a widening set of side effects far from the front.

Street fighting in Sievierodonetsk

On 28 May 2022, Russian troops entered the strategic city of Sievierodonetsk in Luhansk Oblast, and heavy street-to-street fighting was under way. Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said Ukrainian forces might have to retreat from the city to avoid being captured. That was a notable admission of how difficult the position had become.

The day before, on 27 May, Russian forces announced that they had captured the city of Lyman. Taken together, the two reports show the pressure Russian forces were applying in the Donbas offensive. Elsewhere in the east, local authorities said on 26 May that Russian shelling in downtown Kharkiv had killed seven people.

Weapons arriving

On the same day, Ukraine confirmed that it had received Harpoon anti-ship missiles from Denmark and self-propelled howitzers from the United States. The deliveries were intended to help counter the Russian invasion. The confirmation showed foreign aid moving from pledges into shipments, even as the battle for Sievierodonetsk went on.

Sanctions at sea and in the air

The sanctions picture was also shifting. On 28 May 2022, China denied its airspace to Boeing and Airbus aircraft that had been reregistered in Russia as a result of sanctions triggered by the invasion. The reregistration was in violation of international law.

Two days earlier, on 26 May, the United States seized a Russian-owned oil tanker carrying Iranian crude oil in Greece and transferred the cargo to another ship bound for the US. It was unclear whether the seizure was due to US sanctions against Iran or those on Russia.

Mariupol and the Black Sea

Also on 26 May, the Russian defence ministry said civil vessels were allowed to use a maritime humanitarian corridor to reach the port of Mariupol, which Russia had captured the week before.

A regional footnote

In Transnistria, Prime Minister Aleksandr Martynov resigned on 27 May, and Deputy Prime Minister Stanislav Kasap became acting head of government.

What the day showed

The events of those days did not form a single story, but they pointed in the same direction: a ground war concentrated on a few eastern cities, a supply of Western weapons to Ukraine that was now arriving, and sanctions whose effects reached beyond Russia's borders to the aviation sector, Iranian oil cargoes and shipping. The immediate test was Sievierodonetsk, where the governor's own warning set out the stakes.