Zelenskyy warns cities will be turned to ashes

The Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk is the centre of fierce fighting in the east. Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk says it is holding out even though a Russian reconnaissance and sabotage group went into a city hotel.

Stryuk said at least 1500 people have been killed in Sievierodonetsk and about 12,000 to 13,000 remain in the city, where he said 60% of residential buildings have been destroyed.

Sievierodonetsk is the only part of the Luhansk region in the Donbas under Ukrainian government control, and Russian forces have been trying to cut it off from the rest of Ukrainian-controlled territory.

Stryuk said the main road between the neighbouring town of Lysychansk and Bakhmut to the southwest remains open, but travel is dangerous.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded with the West to send multiple launch rocket systems to Ukraine as soon as possible to give it a chance against the Russian offensive in the eastern Donbas.

‘‘We are fighting for Ukraine to be provided with all the weapons needed to change the nature of the fighting and start moving faster and more confidently toward the expulsion of the occupiers,’’ Zelenskyy said.

He said Russian forces are wiping some eastern towns from the face of the Earth and the region could end up ‘‘uninhabited.’’

‘‘They want to turn Popasna, Bakhmut, Lyman, Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk into ashes as they did with Volnovakha and Mariupol,’’ Zelenskyy said.

In the shelling Thursday, local time, of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Zelenskyy said at least nine people were killed and 19 wounded. Among those killed was a five-month-old baby and the infant’s father with the child’s mother seriously injured.

Zelenskyy also had harsh words for members of the European Union who are resisting imposing even tougher sanctions on Russia, including a ban on the import of Russian oil and gas, the major source of revenue for Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says the West will fail in its attempts to isolate Russia and face growing economic problems.

Speaking Thursday, local time, via video link to members of the Eurasian Economic Forum, Putin said Russia wasn’t going to shut itself off from international cooperation. The forum includes several ex-Soviet nations. Putin said that trying to isolate Russia is ‘‘impossible, utterly unrealistic in the modern world’’ and ‘‘those who try to do it primarily hurt themselves.’’

The Russian leader cited growing

economic challenges in the West, including ‘‘inflation unseen in 40 years, growing unemployment, rupture of supply chains and the worsening of global crises in such sensitive spheres as food.’’

‘‘This is not a joke,’’ he said. ‘‘This is a serious thing that will have an impact on the entire system of economic and political relations.’’

He lambasted the West for seizing Russian reserves, saying that ‘‘the theft of others’ assets never brought any good’’.

Lions rescued

Nine lions have been rescued

from a zoo in the Ukrainian city of Odesa after a risky mission by British ex-soldiers and wildlife activists.

Moving the pride had become urgent after a Russian missile strike on the nearby airport. There were fears a direct hit on the zoo could set the animals loose and they were already in danger of starving because of the ruined tourism market.

‘‘There had been a lot of shelling in the area and the lions were traumatised,’’ said Lionel de Lange, who organised the rescue at Biopark zoo and runs the animal charity Warriors of Wildlife.

Plans to liberate the animals ‘‘from under the noses of the Russians’’ – believed to be the biggest big cat rescue in an active war zone – were kept secret until the last minute, de Lange said. He was joined by Tom L-S, a British army veteran who prefers not to use his full name, and a team of war veterans and activists from the animal welfare charity Breaking the Chains, to carry out the daring raid on Tuesday.

‘‘The fighting could go on for a very long time and these animals are in the middle of it and they can’t feed themselves,’’ De Lange said.

Volunteer vets had to sedate the two adult males, five females and two cubs and stretcher them into a convoy of reinforced cages for a 25-hour drive across international borders and checkpoints to a safari park in northeastern Romania.

The lions were still ‘‘destressing’’ in their crates yesterday after the arduous road trip, the first time any of them had travelled.

They were expected to be calm enough to be allowed to begin exploring the grassy paddock at their temporary refuge yesterday. –