Russia Launches All-Out Assault On East Ukraine But Losses Mount

Russia launched its long-awaited all-out assault on east Ukraine on Tuesday, unleashing thousands of troops in what Ukraine described as the Battle of the Donbas, a campaign to seize two provinces and salvage a battlefield victory, Maria Starkova and Pavel Polityuk reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: Ukrainian soldiers in weapons training

Ukrainian officials insisted their troops would withstand the new assault, which they said began overnight with massive Russian artillery and rocket barrages and attempts to advance across almost the entire stretch of the eastern front but the defenders destroyed several tanks and fighting vehicles, the New York Times reported.

Ukrainian forces also used drones and rockets to stop advancing Russian convoys.

In the first reported success of Russia's new assault, Ukraine said the Russians had seized Kreminna, a frontline town of 18,000 people in Luhansk, one of the two Donbas provinces, after Ukrainian units withdrew, the Associated Press (AP) reported. "Kreminna is under the control of the 'Orcs'.

They have entered the city," the province's Ukrainian governor, Sergiy Gaidai, told a briefing, invoking the goblin-like creatures who appear in J.R.R. Tolkein's fantasy books. Russia has poured in 11,000 troops to beef up its forces in Donbas.

Russian forces are attacking "on all sides," authorities are trying to evacuate civilians and it is impossible to tally the civilian dead, Gaidai said. Moscow gave few details about its new campaign, but Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed that "another stage of this operation is beginning."

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the aim was to "liberate" Donetsk and Luhansk, provinces which Moscow demands Kyiv cede fully to Russian-backed separatists.

In the ruins of Mariupol, a southeastern port destroyed while withstanding nearly eight weeks of siege, Russia gave the last Ukrainian defenders holed up in a giant steelworks an ultimatum to surrender by noon (0900 GMT or 5 p.m. on April 19 in Manila) or die.

In one report, Mariupol defenders destroyed three Russian tanks and killed dozens of Chechen and Russian soldiers.

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic