Russia likely to seize control of eastern Ukrainian region within weeks, U.S. official says

In early March, Jakub Kaminski was at home in suburban Boston when a grim message arrived from his friend, a surgeon in Ukraine: Tourniquets were in short supply and, without them, many Ukrainian soldiers could bleed out and die.

Kaminski, a robotics engineering graduate student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, thought his 3D-printing skills could help. Over the next two months, Kaminski and volunteers he recruited designed and refined eight versions of a tourniquet — pieces of cloth connected by buckles and plastic fastening clips — until they made one that was durable enough for war. It was easy for a soldier to tie and could be printed with consistently high quality.

Now they have uploaded their best design to the internet. About 120 individuals and companies worldwide with 3D printers have accessed the design. Together, they have made about 5,000 reusable tourniquets that are bound for Ukraine, where they will be stitched and sent to the battlefield, Kaminski said.

Nearly four months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, shortages of medical supplies and weapons accessories persist. But help has come from an unlikely source: those with 3D printers. Using digital files, people are designing supplies such as bandages, tourniquets, splints and add-ons to AK-47 assault rifles.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday appeared in a video at the American Jewish Committee’s global forum, delivering a fiery speech that decried Russia’s “hatred for humanity” and compared the Kremlin’s tactics to those of the Nazis during the Holocaust.

In the prerecorded video address, Zelensky, Ukraine’s first Jewish president, said Russian attacks have killed hundreds of children.

“Tell me, why is this happening in 2022? This is not the 1940s,” said Zelensky, who lost several family members in the Holocaust. “How could mass killings, torture, burned cities and filtration camps set up by the Russian military in the occupied territories — which resemble Nazi concentration camps — become a reality?”

Zelensky repeated his urgent requests for more powerful weapons. Without them, he said, “the war will only drag on and the number of victims will increase.”

For several weeks, the city of Severodonetsk — a Ukrainian stronghold in the east — has been the war’s most high-profile battlefield, dominating international headlines as both sides continue to commit and lose significant resources and defenders to the intense fighting there.

The city is crucial to Russia’s quest to control the Donbas region, and Ukrainian leaders have said repeatedly that they do not intend to abandon their territory. But Moscow’s troops have tightened their grip on much of the city, and the regional governor said Sunday that the coming days will be critical to the outcome of the protracted battle.

“The situation in Severodonetsk is extremely difficult,” Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk oblast, wrote on Telegram. “The Russians are doing their best to ‘cut off’ Severodonetsk. The next two or three days will be significant.”

In such a high-stakes clash — the fall of the city would give the Kremlin a strategic and symbolic victory — each day is crucial. But Haidai’s pronouncement came the same day as an estimate by a senior U.S. defense official that Russia could seize full control of Severodonetsk and a neighboring city within a week.

In a follow-up post later on Sunday, Haidai projected confidence: “There is no threat to the encirclement of our troops in the Luhansk region,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky highlighted the high-pressure situation in an address Sunday evening.

“The key tactical goal of the occupiers has not changed,” Zelensky said. “They are pressing in Severodonetsk, where very fierce fighting is going on — literally for every meter.”

A Russian missile strike near Chortkiv in the Ternopil region of western Ukraine on Saturday evening injured 22 people, including at least one child, authorities said.

The gas supply to the city was turned off after one of the four missiles hit a gas pipeline, said Volodymyr Trush, head of the regional administration.

“All the missiles came from the Black Sea,” he said, adding that military and civilian facilities, including four housing blocks, were damaged in the attack.

There was no independent confirmation of the damage.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on his official website that there was “no tactical or strategic sense in this strike, as in the vast majority of other Russian strikes. This is terror, just terror.”

“Among the victims is a 12-year-old girl from Kharkiv. She went to the Ternopil region to flee from the Russian army. And such facts will now determine perception of Russia in the world. Not Peter I or Lev Tolstoy, but children wounded and killed by Russian strikes.”

The Russian Defense Ministry said that its navy fired Kalibr cruise missiles and that a Ukrainian warehouse containing antitank missile systems and artillery shells was destroyed. Ukrainian authorities have not commented on the Russian assertion, and The Washington Post was unable to verify it.

Artillery bombardment and airstrikes have caused deaths on both sides in Severodonetsk, a city central to the Kremlin’s goal of capturing eastern Ukraine. Russia has seized most of the city and could take control of the region within a few weeks, a senior U.S. defense official said.

Here are updates from across the country:

Severodonetsk: Russian forces destroyed a second bridge to the besieged city overnight and were shelling a third — the last one standing — to try to cut off the transport of people and supplies, said Serhiy Haidai, governor of the eastern Luhansk oblast. Russia now controls most of the city as battles continue over the Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway and the Azot industrial zone, where a fire broke out. Pro-Russian separatist leaders in Luhansk said 300 to 400 Ukrainian troops are encircled at the Azot chemical plant, although Haidai rebutted those claims. Ukrainian officials say a third of Severodonetsk remains under Ukraine’s control.

Slovyansk area: Russian forces are advancing toward this city in the Donetsk region and have made minor gains north of it. The Ukrainian military said its forces repelled a Russian attack Saturday at Dolyna, 15 miles north of Slovyansk. The Institute for the Study of War forecasts that successfully attacking Slovyansk will be difficult because of challenges crossing the Siverskyi Donets river.

Ternopil region: A Russian missile strike near Chortkiv in western Ukraine injured 22 people, including a child, local authorities said. Volodymyr Trush, head of the regional administration, said the city’s gas supply was turned off after one of four missiles hit a gas pipeline. Military and civilian facilities were also damaged, he said. There was no independent confirmation of the damage.

Mariupol: The Ukrainian attorney general said the deaths of 24 more children have been recorded in this southern city now controlled by Russia, bringing the confirmed number of children killed in Ukraine since the war began to 287. The civilian casualty figures are incomplete, authorities have said. Meanwhile, the bodies of dozens of fighters killed while defending the Azovstal steel plant have not been recovered, said Maksym Zhorin, a former commander of the Azov Regiment that formed the backbone of the defense there.

Ukraine has set up routes through Romania and Poland to export grain, although bottlenecks have been an issue, the country’s deputy foreign minister told Reuters on Sunday.

A Russian naval blockade has halted exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, leading to concerns about global food insecurity. Ukraine is among the world’s leading exporters of sunflower oil, corn and wheat, and the European Union has accused Moscow of “weaponizing” food supplies to try to gain an advantage in the war.

Western officials have also alleged that Russia is using food as a kind of blackmail, while Russia has blamed the lagging exports on Western sanctions and mines placed by Ukraine.

Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of an Asian security summit in Singapore, Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Dmytro Senik said his country is “doing our best” to ensure millions of tons of blocked grain reaches its destination. He said he did not have information on how much of it was being sent through the two new routes.

“Those routes are not perfect because it creates certain bottlenecks, but we are doing our best to develop those routes in the meantime,” Senik said.