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Ukraine, Pokrovsk-Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine on Monday the day after Ukrainian troops withdrew from Ukraine’s last resistance breakwater.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin at a video conference on Monday that Russian troops ruled Luhansk. Luhansk, along with the neighboring Donetsk Oblast, constitutes the industrial center of Ukraine’s Donbus.
Shoigu told Putin that the “operation” was completed on Sunday after Russian troops conquered the city of Lysychans’k, the last base of Ukrainian troops in Luhansk.
Putin then said in Luhansk that troops that “participated in active hostilities and achieved success and victory” should “rest and improve their fighting ability.”
Putin’s declaration was issued when Russian troops attempted to push an attack into eastern Ukraine after confirming that Ukrainian troops had withdrawn from Lysychans’k on Sunday. Luhansk Governor Serhii Haidai said on Monday that Ukrainian troops had withdrawn from the city to avoid being surrounded.
“There was a risk of siege of Lysychans’k,” Haidai told The Associated Press, adding that Ukrainian troops could hold up for a few more weeks, but may have paid too high a price.
“We managed to do a centralized withdrawal and evacuate all the injured,” Haidai said. “From this point on, the withdrawal was well organized, as we have regained all the equipment.”
The Ukrainian Army General Staff said Russian troops are now focused on advancing towards the lines of Siversk, Fedrifka and Bakumut in the Donetsk region, about half of which are dominated by Russia. Russian troops have also stepped up the bombardment of the major Ukrainian fortresses of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, deeper in Donetsk.
Six people were killed and another 19 were injured in a Russian strike in Slovyansk on Sunday, according to local officials. Kramatorsk also fired on Sunday.
An intelligence briefing from the British Ministry of Defense supported the Ukrainian military’s assessment on Monday, saying Russian troops would “almost certainly” switch to the occupation of Donetsk. According to the briefing, the conflict at Donbus is “frustration and exhaustion” and is unlikely to change in the coming weeks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it an important goal to occupy the entire Donbus during the war in Ukraine. Donbus’ Moscow-supported separatists have been fighting Ukrainian troops since 2014, when they declared independence from Kyiv after the merger of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula with Russia. Russia officially approved the self-proclaimed republic a few days before the invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
In his nightly video speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the withdrawal, but Ukrainian troops vowed to fight their way home.
“This is especially true for Lysychans’k, especially if our army orders withdraw people from a particular point in front of the enemy where they have the greatest fire advantage, which means only one thing. : We are back thanks to tactics Supply of modern weapons, “Zelensky insisted.
In an intelligence report on Monday, the British Department of Defense pointed out Russia’s blockade of Odesa, Ukraine’s main port, which severely restricts grain exports. As a result, they predicted that Ukraine’s agricultural exports would reach only 35 percent of the total in 2021 this year.
As Moscow pushed the attack across the east of Ukraine, the western part of Russia was attacked on Sunday with a sporadic apparent Ukrainian strike resurrection across the border. The governor of the Belgorod region of western Russia said fragments of Ukrainian missiles intercepted killed four people on Sunday. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, two Ukrainian drones were shot down in the Russian city of Kursk.
By Francesca Ebel
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