Moscow claims the capture of the strategic city of Lysytchansk

The Russian flag flies over the hospital from Lysychansk. The city has just fallen, the journalists of France Télévisions are among the first to enter. The city looks like a battlefield. In the streets, vehicles are destroyed, to form chicanes. At the edge, residents greet the pro-Russian separatist soldiers.

Those who have not been evacuated are just emerging, after days spent sheltering in cellars. The pro-Ukrainians seem gone. The residents interviewed say they are happy with the arrival of the Russians. “I want to scream, scream, scream for joy. For the others, I can’t say, but around me, everyone is like that“, says Elena Niestchoudnaïa, a resident of Lysychansk.

The town was the last in the region of Luhansk which still eluded the pro-Russian separatists. So the soldiers want to show a good picture of what they call a liberation, like with the distribution of food aid. They make children hang the flag of the victory of the Red Army over the victory of Nazi Germany. Some residents applaud.