{"id":651706,"date":"2025-12-24T03:35:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T03:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/651706\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T03:35:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T03:35:12","slug":"russian-forces-seize-embattled-siversk-town-as-ukrainian-troops-withdraw-russia-ukraine-war-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/651706\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian forces seize embattled Siversk town as Ukrainian troops withdraw | Russia-Ukraine war News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ukrainian military says its forces have withdrawn from \u200b\u200bthe battle-scarred town of Siversk in the eastern Donetsk region after heavy fighting with Russian forces<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a statement on Telegram on Tuesday, Ukraine\u2019s General Staff said that Russian troops had a \u201csignificant advantage\u201d in manpower and equipment and had exerted constant pressure on the defending Ukrainian troops by staging small-unit assaults in difficult weather conditions.<\/p>\n

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Ukraine\u2019s decision to withdraw its forces was made to \u201cpreserve the lives of our soldiers and the combat capability of the units\u201d, the General Staff said.<\/p>\n

Heavy losses were inflicted on Russian forces<\/a> before the order to retreat was given, and Siversk remains \u201cunder the fire control of our troops\u201d, and \u201cenemy units are being blocked to prevent their further advance,\u201d the General Staff added.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s DeepState military monitoring site reported late on Tuesday that Russian forces had occupied Siversk as well as Hrabovske, a village in Ukraine\u2019s Sumy region close to the border with Russia.<\/p>\n

Russian Lieutenant General Sergei Medvedev had told Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 11 that troops had taken Siversk, where fighting has been fierce in recent months, but Ukrainian officials denied the Russian reports at the time.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s military said at the time that Russian troops were \u201ctaking advantage of unfavourable weather conditions\u201d to launch attacks, but were mostly being \u201cdestroyed on the approaches\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Kyiv Independent news site said that, despite Siversk\u2019s modest size \u2013 it had a pre-war population of 10,000, and now, just a few hundred civilians remain \u2013 the town was key to the defence of northern Donetsk.<\/p>\n

The town had helped shield the larger Sloviansk and Kramatorsk areas, \u201cthe main bastions of Ukraine\u2019s so-called \u2018fortress belt’\u201d, which Russia has been unable to conquer since the start of fighting, the Kyiv Independent said.<\/p>\n

Donetsk is one of three Ukrainian regions at the centre of Russia\u2019s territorial demands, which are the stumbling blocks to reaching an agreement on a ceasefire. Ukraine\u2019s leaders have said they will not concede their country\u2019s territory taken during Moscow\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n

Russian forces had already seized an estimated 19 percent of Ukrainian territory as of early December, including Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, all of the Luhansk region, and more than 80 percent of Donetsk, according to the Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n

Russian forces also control about 75 percent of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, and small parts of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n

A 28-point peace plan<\/a> first put forward by the administration of US President Donald Trump last month says that a negotiated settlement would see Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk \u201crecognised as de facto Russian, including by the US\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently said that the United States is pushing for Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the Donetsk region to establish a \u201cfree economic zone<\/a>\u201d in the area, which he said the Russian side is referring to as a \u201cdemilitarised zone\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"PeoplePeople visit the graves of fallen Ukrainian soldiers, decorated with Christmas trees and New Year\u2019s decorations, at the Lychakiv Military Cemetery, in Lviv, Ukraine on Tuesday [Yuriy Dyachyshyn\/AFP]Pope saddened as fighting continues over Christmas<\/p>\n

The latest setback for Kyiv on the battlefield came as Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that Russian forces had launched another \u201cmassive attack\u201d on Ukraine<\/a> on Monday night, killing at least three people, including a four-year-old girl, across 13 regions targeted with drones and missiles.<\/p>\n

In Russia, Ukrainian drone attacks killed four people in the Belgorod region over the past two days, local officials said.<\/p>\n

Pope \u200dLeo \u200dexpressed disappointment on Tuesday that Russia had apparently refused to agree to a ceasefire on December 25, the date many Christians celebrate Christmas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will make \u200ban appeal one \u200cmore time to people of goodwill to respect at least Christmas \u200cDay as a day of \u200cpeace,\u201d Leo said, speaking to reporters outside his residence in Castel Gandolfo, Italy.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe they will listen to us, and there \u200cwill be at least 24 hours, a day of peace, \u200dacross the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While most people in Ukraine and Russia are Christians, many are Orthodox, meaning they observe Christmas<\/a> on January 7.<\/p>\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced an unexpected 30-hour unilateral truce<\/a> a day before Easter this year, a rare pause in Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine, which has now continued for close to three years, after Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion in February 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ukrainian military says its forces have withdrawn from \u200b\u200bthe battle-scarred town of Siversk in the eastern Donetsk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[6178,32,299,2597,12,332,7661,657,333],"class_list":{"0":"post-651706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-conflict","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-military","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","15":"tag-ukraine","16":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115772452940685980","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}