June 6, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

After reclaiming territory from Russia over the weekend, Ukrainian forces in the eastern city of Severodonetsk are under renewed attack, the region’s top official said on Monday. 

“Our defenders managed to counterattack for a while ­– they liberated almost half of the city. However, now the situation has worsened for us again.”

Hayday said the Russians are using “standard scorched-earth tactics,” and that evacuation of the approximately 15,000 civilians remaining in Severodonetsk is impossible because of intense fighting.

He said Russia is targeting most of its shelling at the neighboring city of Lysychansk, which sits on strategic high ground across the Siverskyi Donets River from Severodonetsk.

He said a further 15,000 civilians remained in Lysychansk and that police are managing to evacuate a small number of them

Finally, he said that Russia has devoted a “simply incredible” number of troops and equipment to bombarding the main access road to Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, which runs between Bakhmut and Lysychansk.

“The Russians do not control this road, but the entire route is being shelled,” he said. “The Russians have amassed huge reserves. Time will tell whether they will have enough strength to take this route.”

A Russian missile attack on Kyiv on Sunday was likely an attempt to disrupt the supply of Western military equipment to frontline Ukrainian units, the UK's Ministry of Defense said in its latest intelligence assessment on Monday.

One of the missiles was intercepted by Ukraine’s air defense unit, but the rest hit “infrastructure facilities in the north of the Ukrainian capital,” the General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said on Sunday.  

Vadym Denysenko, an adviser to Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs, said one military target was hit, and one civilian target.

But passenger trains were not delayed by the attacks, he said.

Kamyshin denied Russian reports that his company was housing military equipment, and invited journalists to verify that by visiting the plant.

The UK Ministry of Defense also said that heavy fighting continues in the eastern city of Severodonetsk and that Russian forces continue to push towards the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk in the Donetsk region. 

Russian forces have likely moved multiple air defense assets to Snake Island in the Black Sea, including SA-15 and SA-22 systems and it is likely that these weapons are intended to provide air defense for Russian naval vessels operating around Snake Island, the ministry said. 

A CNN team driving east from Dnipro on Monday morning saw long lines of civilian cars driving west from the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Donetsk region. 

Fighting in the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk and Luhansk regions has intensified in recent weeks, with stepped-up Russian attacks on the city of Sloviansk, and an intense urban battle for Severodonetsk, the eastern-most city controlled by the Ukrainian government.

As Russian forces closed in on Hostomel in late February, the town's mayor Yurii Prylypko urged local residents to take care of each other.

Days later, Prylypko was dead. He and another civilian, Ivan Zorya, were killed by Russian soldiers, eyewitnesses say, as they tried to deliver medicines and other supplies to people in the community. Another civilian, Oleksandr Karpenko, was killed while trying to save them.

Russia has consistently denied targeting civilians during its invasion of Ukraine.

But photos of the scene taken in its aftermath and images captured by security cameras on the day of the attack make it clear the mayor was traveling in a civilian car when Russian troops opened fire. There were no other cars or military vehicles nearby at the time, according to the eyewitnesses.

As part of an investigation into the three men's deaths, CNN spoke to three eyewitnesses to the attack on March 3 and to several other local residents who saw Prylypko's and Zorya's bodies lying on the street in the days following the shooting.

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Gunned down on a mercy mission: Witnesses say Russian troops killed Hostomel mayor and two volunteers

Russia is intensifying its efforts to gain control of eastern Ukraine, with heavy fighting in the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned Moscow will strike new targets if the United States supplies long-range missiles to Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he visited troops in some of the most heavily bombarded frontline positions Sunday.

In his nightly address, Zelensky said: "We were in Lysychansk and we were in Soledar."

Both places have been under heavy Russian attack for weeks, suffering missile, rocket and aerial bombardment.

Earlier Sunday, Zelensky was in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, where he said he'd met the mayors of some occupied towns.

"I met with Mariupol residents who managed to leave the city alive and with children. I met them in Khortytsia. Conditions are temporary but not bad," he said. "Each family had its own story, most without men. Someone's husband went to war, someone in captivity, and someone, unfortunately, died."

The Ukrainian military has reported another day of heavy fighting in the Donetsk region, especially on the northern approaches to the key city of Sloviansk.

The armed forces' General Staff did not acknowledge losing any territory but said Russian troops had resumed their offensive near Sviatohirsk, some 12 miles (20 km) north of Sloviansk, and had suffered losses. It said there had been further air strikes against Sloviansk. The city is located more than 300 miles east of the capital Kyiv.

Further east, the General Staff said Russian forces had tried to storm two districts (Bilohorivka and Mykolaivka), that, if lost by the Ukrainians, would put the city of Severodonetsk at risk of encirclement.

Local authorities reported the town of Bakhmut -- a lynchpin in Ukraine's defense of Donetsk and Luhansk -- had been shelled again. An agricultural machinery plant had been set on fire, they said.

Fighting in the south continues, with territory changing hands since a Ukrainian counter-offensive began a week ago.

The General Staff said the Russians were conducting an offensive in the area of ​​Bila Krynytsia in the north of the Kherson region, a district recently retaken by Ukrainian forces. The head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Vilkul, said Russian units had "retreated to previously occupied positions."

A grain storage silo was destroyed in the city of Mykolaiv, according to images from the area geolocated by CNN. The Operational Command South of the Ukrainian forces said "from the direction of the Black Sea and from the territory of Russia, the Black Sea coast of Mykolaiv region, ports and granaries were attacked by air-based cruise missiles."

Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated that Moscow’s actions have nothing to do with the looming energy and food crisis in the world and again blamed economic and financial policies of the West for creating such a scenario.

Current and former energy officials tell CNN they worry that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the wake of years of underinvestment in the energy sector have sent the world careening into a crisis that will rival, or even exceed, the oil crises of the 1970s and early 1980s.

US President Joe Biden has blamed Russia's invasion for domestic price hikes and global food supply shortages.

In an interview with state TV channel Rossiya-1, conducted Friday and aired in full Sunday, the Russian leader blamed the United States for "injecting large sums of money" into its economy as a means of combating the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, which led to inflation and an "unfavorable situation in the food market, because first of all, food prices went up."

Putin also blamed "the short-sighted policy of European countries, and above all the European Commission, in the energy sector" as another reason for the crisis in food and energy market. 

As soon as gas prices went up, fertilizer prices "immediately increased, because some of these fertilizers are produced, including at the expense of gas. Everything is interconnected," Putin added. 

"But we warned about this, and this has nothing to do with any military operation of Russia," Putin said. 

The Kremlin said last week that Moscow is ready to make a “significant contribution” to avoid the food crisis through the export of grain and fertilizers, if the West lifts “politically motivated restrictions” on Russia.  

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with soldiers on the frontline and internally displaced Ukrainians during a trip to Zaporizhzhia region on Sunday. 

Zelensky "visited the frontline positions of the Ukrainian military," taking the opportunity to acquaint himself "with the operational situation on the frontline of defense," a statement from the Ukrainian Presidency said. 

The president spoke with the soldiers, presenting them with state awards and thanking them for their service, according to the statement. 

He also paid a trip to a sanatorium where internally displaced Ukrainians, forced to flee their homes, have been receiving shelter and medical care, according to a separate statement from the Ukrainian Presidency. 

Some more context: Almost 12 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Zelensky told lawmakers in Luxembourg on Thursday. 

IDPs who had traveled from the southern city of Mariupol recounted to the president the "tragic events they had to endure due to the Russian invasion, "appealing to him for help with recovering lost documents and issuing death certificates of relatives who died in the temporarily occupied territories, according to the statement. 

Zelensky invited them to put forward suggestions for "legislative changes" that could be made to simplify the procedures for obtaining these documents. 

He assured the IDPs that all those who have lost their homes will be provided with "comfortable housing," according to the statement. 

Finally, Zelensky gave a gift to 8-year-old boy, Yehor Kravtsov, who kept a diary while living under shelling in Mariupol. Yehor, whose "Mariupol Diary" writings were published on social networks, shared his experiences of the city's bombing with Zelensky.