Militias from the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Lugansk announced on Saturday that they, along with Russian troops, had entered Lisichansk, the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in the Lugansk region. There is combat inside the city.
Also on Saturday, the Russians took full control of the city of Severodonetsk, in the same region, separated only by a river from Lisichansk. The information was confirmed by the mayor of Severodonetsk, Oleksandr Striuk, who announced the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the city. Severodonetsk has been the scene of intense fighting over the past few weeks.
The fall of Severodonetsk and the eventual capture of Lisichansk will allow the Kremlin to claim that it occupied the entire Lugansk region, and fulfilled the objective of “liberating” the entire Donbas, also integrated by neighboring Donetsk. The conquest is seen as an essential step in the Russian project to dominate eastern Ukraine.
“The people’s militia and the allied forces of the Russian Federation have entered the city of Lisichansk. The fighting takes place in the urban area,” said Andrey Marochko, a lieutenant colonel in the Lugansk forces, quoted by the Russian news agency. TASS.
Since yesterday, Ukrainian troops have been deployed to the region. Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar made an appeal on Saturday on Facebook not to mention the movements of the country’s troops, as this jeopardizes the progress of military operations, “as happened yesterday in Severodonetsk”.
However, Ukrainian officials maintain that advances by Russian troops in the east of the country will not represent a major change in the course of the war.
The Kiev military command, in turn, considers that the military aid offered in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions managed to wear down the Russian army and allowed time for Ukraine to receive heavy weapons from the West.
According to the adviser to Ukraine’s presidential office, Mikhail Podoliak, Russia has changed its initial strategy and is now betting on a long war, relying on the quantitative superiority of its arsenal.
“The next three months will be extremely difficult. But, we are prepared to fight any level of intensity”, said the representative of the Ukrainian government, in an interview with the YouTube channel “Populiarnaya Politika”.
Podoliak assured that Kiev will only negotiate a peace plan with Russia “from positions of strength”, that is, when the situation at the front is favoring Ukraine.
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