Kyiv: Russia said it had taken full control of Ukrainian territory east of Luhansk on Sunday after capturing Ukraine’s last stronghold Lisichansk, the city where Kyiv said it had withdrawn to save the lives of its soldiers. The capture of the area, a major Russian war objective, is a political victory for the Kremlin after several weeks of progress and the transfer of the battlefield to the neighboring Donetsk region, where Kyiv still controls ownership of the area. Since abandoning the attack on the capital Kyiv, Russia has focused its military campaign on the industrial Donbass heartland that includes the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukraine behind proxies since 2014.
Russia says it is occupying the Luhansk region to give it to the self-proclaimed Russian-backed Luhansk People’s Republic, whose independence was recognized on the eve of the war. Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed President Vladimir Putin that Luhansk had been “liberated”, the Defense Ministry said, adding that Russia had previously said its forces had captured the villages and cities around Lysichansk. has surrounded.
Ukraine’s military command said its forces had been forced to retreat from the city. “Continuing to defend the city will result in fatalities. In order to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders, the decision was made to withdraw,” it said in a statement on social media.
Ukrainian officials, who say the references to “liberating” Ukrainian territory are Russian propaganda, had reported intense artillery barrages on residential areas. In a statement on the Telegram messaging app, Luhansk regional governor Serhi Haidai also confirmed Ukraine’s withdrawal after “heavy fighting”.
“No betrayal here! When you write – surrendered, abandoned, abandoned, think first and foremost about the cost of our march towards victory, about the fighters defending the city, some of their lives.” At the cost of…” Haidai wrote.
In the west of the Donetsk region, at least six people were killed when powerful shelling from multiple rocket launchers hit the Ukrainian city of Slovakia on Sunday, local officials said.
costly campaign
Thousands of civilians have been killed and cities leveled since Russia’s invasion of Russia on February 24, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of deliberately targeting civilians. Moscow denies this. Russia says what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine aimed at protecting Russian-speaking nationalists from nationalists. Ukraine and its Western allies say it is a baseless excuse for its open offensive aimed at capturing the region.
Neil Melvin of London-based think tank RUSI said Russia would try to frame its progress in Luhansk as a pivotal moment in the war, but it came at a high cost to Russia’s military. “Ukraine was never in a position to defend all this. What they are trying to do is to slow down the Russian attack and inflict maximum damage while they prepare for a counterattack,” he said.
The victory allows Putin to claim some limited success after a grinding and costly attack, but Ukraine could return to an easier-to-defend line that would have allowed it to use long-range Western artillery and other weapons. Capturing those systems, said Rob Lee of the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, poses less risk to nearby Russian forces.
“I doubt Russia will make some more profit, but the big question is this: it is important to Putin symbolically, but strategically, it is not disastrous for Ukraine unless they inflict heavy casualties in the process. are,” said Lee. , adding that the extent of the Ukrainian losses was unclear.
Kharkiv attack
Russia’s defense ministry also said on Sunday that it had attacked military structures in the northeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, where a Reuters reporter said Ukrainian forces were building fortifications after nighttime shelling. Was being
Outside a school in Kharkiv, some residents threw debris into a large pit created by rocket attacks early in the morning, while others helped repair damaged homes.
“The wife was lucky to get up early in the morning because the ceiling collapsed right where she was sleeping,” a resident, Oleksiy Mihulin, told Reuters.
Russia also reported explosions in Belgorod on Sunday, about 70 km (44 miles) from Kharkiv on the Russian border, which it said killed at least three people and destroyed homes.
“The sound was so loud that I jumped, I woke up, got very scared and started screaming,” the Belgorod resident told Reuters. The explosion occurred at around 3 am (0000 GMT). Moscow has accused Kyiv of several attacks on Belgorod and other areas bordering Ukraine. Kyiv has never claimed responsibility for any of these incidents.
military base hit
Ukraine said its air force made about 15 flights “in almost all directions of the hostility”, destroying equipment and two ammunition depots. In the city of Melitopol in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, Ukrainian forces attacked a military logistics base with more than 30 strikes on Sunday, the city’s exiled mayor Ivan Fedorov said. An official established in Russia confirmed that there had been attacks in the city.
Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield reports. Ukraine has repeatedly urged the West to speed up arms supplies, saying its military has been heavily exhausted.
Speaking on a visit to Kyiv, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government would provide Ukraine with additional armored vehicles, as well as impose tougher sanctions against Russia. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told broadcaster ARD that Germany was discussing security guarantees for post-war Ukraine with its allies, although it was clear that these “would not be the same as if someone were a member of NATO”.