What’s next after Russia’s defeat in Ukraine’s Donetsk?

Criticism mounts in Russia over military failures as Ukrainian forces celebrate their recapture of Lyman, an important eastern town.

Russia’s loss of Lyman, which it had been using as a transport and logistics hub, was a new blow to the Kremlin as it seeks to escalate the war [File: Inna Varenytsia/AP] Kyiv, Ukraine – The Russian general who lost a strategic town in eastern Ukraine should spill his blood on the front line to “wash away his shame”. That’s what Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s leader and one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s key allies, said of Alexander Lapin, the Russian colonel general who led the defence of Lyman in the Donetsk region and ordered a retreat last weekend. Before he pulled back his troops, Lapin moved his headquarters to the separatist stronghold of Luhansk, 160km (100 miles) away from Lyman, Kadyrov said tion equipment and said he did not coordinate his forces on the ground. “Had it been up to me, I would have demoted Lapin to a trooper, took away his decorations and sent him to the front line with an assault rifle in his hands to wash away his shame with his blood,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram on Saturday.

The Russian defence ministry said it had withdrawn its forces from Lyman to “better ground The Russian defence ministry said it had withdrawn its forces from Lyman to “better ground”. The flight from Lyman reported by the Ukrainian military looked especially humiliating because it followed Putin’s announcement on Friday of the annexation of four Ukrainian regions – including Donetsk. Lyman victory paves way for further gains To Ukrainian observers, the Lyman defeat embodies the inherent faults of Russia’s entire military system, which still wages wars according to Soviet-era strategies. “The times have changed, but the Russian army hasn’t, and that’s it,” said Ihar Tyshkevich, a Kyiv-based analyst. “When you are trying to use military instructions written in the 1970s, sooner or later happens what happened in the Kharkiv region and near Lyman.” Lyman’s liberation could pave the way for Ukraine’s takeover of the oldest hotbeds of pro-Russian separatism in Donetsk and Luhansk, known collectively as the Donbas

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