Severodonetsk, a Mariupol in the Donbass?

• Since the 2014 war, Severodonetsk has become the capital of the Ukrainian part of Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine.

• Still under Ukrainian control while almost all of Donbass is in Russian hands, the city has been under heavy bombardment for several days, and sees the columns of tanks converge on the only bridge that the artillery has spared.

• If the majority of the 230,000 inhabitants fled at the start of the Russian invasion, several thousand civilians would remain trapped with nearly 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers in what could become the equivalent of Mariupol in the Donbass.

kyiv, Mariupol, and now Severodonetsk?

After three months of fighting, it is the turn of a new city to take on the face of the martyrdom of the war in Ukraine, the first having been too big a goal even for the Russian ogre, the second having just surrendered, literally exhausted, after long weeks of intensive bombing.

Despite themselves, these two cities embody the tragedy that is brewing at the gates of Europe, even if it means making people forget Kherson, Kharkiv or even Melitopol.

New privileged target of the Russian army, does Severodontesk fall into the same category, already eclipsing its twin Lysyschansk?

Unlike the capital or the immense port on the Azov Sea, Severodonetsk “does not really present any strategic interest”, considers Philippe Migault, director of the European Center for Strategic Analysis (CEAS).

"It's more a matter of symbol than tactics", abounds the former general Vincent Desportes, who draws a parallel with "the projection of Verdun in 1916, which France refuses to let go".

Like the city on the Meuse, Severodonetsk is indeed the easternmost city controlled by the Ukrainians, embedded in the territory acquired from the Russians.

10,000 to 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers entrenched

A real thorn in the side, which makes it "difficult to launch an offensive" towards the west for Russia, judges the one who is now a professor of strategy at HEC and Sciences Po and author of the essay

(Ed. Of Christmas).

Especially since the city is home to no less than 10,000 soldiers, if not 15,000.

"Russia's interest is to destroy the Ukrainian resistance", and therefore these regiments, insists Philippe Migault.

The conquest, or rather the “liberation” of the entire Donbass, as it is presented by the Russian authorities, would be greatly facilitated.

The columns of Russian tanks advance all the same.

Popasna, 45 kilometers to the south, fell on May 7, and the pincers should soon close in on Severodonetsk.

A siege which concentrates a good part of the Russian troops, as during the first days of that of Mariupol.

"The Russian effort is shrinking because of a capacity problem", summarizes Vincent Desportes, while Vladimir Putin's army has already lost 15,000 men according to British estimates, as much as in nine years of war in Afghanistan .

No Azovstal bis

What does not encourage to go to fight melee, nor to defend the smallest street corner.

“The Ukrainians are going to cling to the ruins,” says the former general.

The pocket of resistance could not, however, be organized as in Mariupol, where the Azovstal steelworks had taken over from the city as the last Ukrainian rampart on the sea. is a large chemical centre”, with tanks filled with dangerous substances.

"It's risky to set up a center of resistance there", tempers Philippe Migault.

For the moment, Russia is content to shell the city day and night, and gradually cut its means of communication.

This Tuesday morning, one of the two bridges that still linked the city to the rest of the region fell, "and the last one is under fire from Russian artillery", says the director of CEAS.

Like Mariupol, Severodonetsk therefore seems doomed to be irreparably disfigured, entire neighborhoods to be destroyed and its population to suffer from hunger and thirst.

The electricity network has been cut for several days.

After that ?

While many of the 230,000 residents have fled, tens of thousands of civilians are believed to remain stuck in Severodonetsk, now without a way out of the city to safety.

The martyrdom of its inhabitants and the resistance of its soldiers form "the second stage of Ukrainian glory", image then Vincent Desportes, for whom the Ukrainian nation "has been forged above all since 2014" and "needs this kind of symbols ".

Not falling too quickly after Mariupol then becomes an issue in itself, "it would be defeats that follow one another", bad for the morale of Ukraine as a whole, fears Philippe Migault.

Conversely, the Russian army would find itself "in a spiral of success".

After that ?

“It will be Slaviansk and Kramatorsk, to complete the conquest of Donbass”, indicates the director of CEAS.

Less categorical, Vincent Desportes evokes the possibility of moving “finally to negotiations”, with a severely amputated Ukrainian army, unless Russia extends its advantage to the south, towards Mykolaiev then Odessa… the third Mariupol?

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