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Sievierodonetsk, HIMARS and an oil embargo: 31 May 2022
Summary
A retrospective on a day when fighting for a Luhansk city intensified while Washington and European capitals announced new steps.
What did the war look like on 31 May 2022? In the east, a city was being contested street by street. Abroad, governments were committing to military and economic measures that would take time to show their effect.
A city under assault
Ukraine said on 31 May 2022 that Russian forces had taken control of most of Sievierodonetsk, in Luhansk Oblast, after launching a full-scale assault. Serhiy Haidai, the Luhansk governor, said 60% of the structures in the city had been destroyed in the fighting.
The day before, on 30 May 2022, Ukrainian authorities had said Russian forces had entered the city and left it without water. On 31 May an airstrike hit a tank filled with nitric acid in Sievierodonetsk. The governor asked residents to stay inside bomb shelters because of the risk of exposure to toxic fumes.
Elsewhere in the east, a Russian missile hit an apartment in Sloviansk, Donetsk Oblast, on 31 May, killing three people and injuring six. On 30 May, rebel forces said a Ukrainian shelling attack in Donetsk had killed five civilians, including a teenager, and injured 13. Also on 30 May, Haidai said a French journalist had been killed by Russian shelling in Luhansk Oblast.
In the south, a car bomb on 30 May injured at least three people in Russian-occupied Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Russian authorities blamed pro-Ukrainian residents.
Weapons from Washington
On 31 May 2022 the US president, Joe Biden, announced an 11th package of military aid for Ukraine. It included more advanced rocket systems and munitions, among them High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS). These, he said, would help Ukraine strike key targets more precisely. NATO said it did not expect Russia to take matching action in response to the decision.
Pressure on Russian oil
The economic front moved as well. On 30 May 2022, after weeks of deliberation, all EU member states agreed to an embargo on most Russian oil imports. Oil delivered by pipeline was excepted, and the embargo was to be fully implemented by the end of the year. The EU also agreed to cut Sberbank off from SWIFT.
On 31 May the United Kingdom and the European Union agreed to ban the insurance of Russian oil tankers, to be phased in beginning in six months. Because most institutions that conduct such insurance are in Western Europe, the measure would effectively render the vast majority of oil tankers uninsurable.
The shape of the day
The reports from 30 and 31 May 2022 show a conflict fought on several levels at once: a damaged city in Luhansk Oblast with water cut and toxic-fumes warnings, shelling and missile strikes on residential areas on both sides of the front line, and Western decisions on weapons and sanctions whose effects lay in the future.
