The Russian Defense Minister said his forces took control of the last major Ukrainian-controlled city in Ukraine’s Lugansk province on Sunday, bringing Moscow closer to its goal of seizing the entire Donbass region of Ukraine.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin that Russian troops, along with members of a local separatist militia, “have established full control over the city of Lisichansk,” a ministry statement said.
Taking Lisichansk, he said, constitutes “the liberation of the Lugansk People’s Republic,” one of two breakaway regions in Ukraine that recognizes Russia as sovereign, the statement said.
Ukrainian fighters spent weeks trying to defend Lisichansk from falling to Russia, as neighboring Sievierodonetsk did a week ago.
A presidential adviser predicted late Saturday that the city’s fate could be determined within days. Ukrainian officials have not immediately given an update on his condition.
Earlier on Sunday, the governor of Luhansk said Russian forces were strengthening their positions in an exhausted fight to capture the last resistance stronghold in the province. “The occupiers threw all their forces on Lisichansk and attacked the city with incomprehensibly cruel tactics,” Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said. “They suffer significant losses, but they stubbornly advance. They are establishing themselves in the city.”
Dimitri Arestovich, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, said during an interview on Saturday night that Russian forces for the first time managed to cross the river from the north, creating a “threatening” situation.
Arestovych said that they had not reached the center of the city, but that the course of the fighting indicated that the battle for Lisichansk would be decided on Monday.
Lugansk and neighboring Donetsk are the two provinces that make up the Donbass, where Russia has focused its offensive since moving away from northern Ukraine and the capital, kyiv.
Pro-Russian separatists have occupied parts of both eastern provinces since 2014. Moscow recognizes Lugansk and Donetsk as sovereign republics.
