Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered his forces to continue their offensive in eastern Ukraine after conquering the entire Lugansk region.
The Russian forces “must carry out their missions according to the plans already approved”, declared Mr. Putin during an interview with his Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, broadcast on television.
“I hope that in their sectors everything will happen as it happened in Lugansk,” he added.
These statements come the day after the announcement of the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the strategic city of Lysytchansk, a takeover which completes the control of the Lugansk region by Russian forces and the separatists put in place by Moscow.
The Lugansk region and the neighboring Donetsk region form the Donbass, a mining basin in eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s forces intend to conquer in its entirety.
Mr. Shoigu, the Russian Minister of Defense, said Monday that the forces of Moscow were in the process of “demining the city of Lysytchansk”.
Mr. Putin also indicated that two of his generals, Alexander Lapin and Essedoulla Abatchev, will be made “Heroes of Russia” for their role in the fighting in Ukraine, without further details.
Russia, very secret about this type of information, had recently revealed the names of two generals, Sergei Surovikin and Alexander Lapin, in charge of the offensive on Lyssytchansk.
On Monday, Mr. Putin said that these two men had “reported directly to him [lundi] on the course taken by the execution of their missions and their proposals for the continuation of the offensive operations”.
The capture of Lyssytchansk, which formed a strategic lock with the twin city of Severodonetsk, allows Russian forces and separatists to move more easily towards the west and the key cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the two largest cities of Donbass still controlled by the kyiv army.
On Monday, a senior separatist official, Vitali Kiseliev, said that forces from Moscow were now advancing from two directions towards the locality of Siversk, on the way to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.