After advances, the situation “has worsened” for Ukrainian forces in Severodonetsk, a key city in the east of the country and the current epicenter of fierce fighting with Russian troops, the regional governor announced on Monday morning.
“The fighting is very fierce in Severodonetsk. Our defenders managed to counterattack and liberate half of the city, but the situation got worse for us,” Sergiy Gaidai, governor of the Lugansk region, told Ukrainian 1+1 television without further details. .
According to him, the bombardments have further intensified on Severodonetsk and Lyssytchansk, a neighboring city located on “the heights” and strategic to “hold the line of defense”.
The Russians are “destroying everything with their usual scorched earth tactic” so that “there is nothing left to defend”, he charged.
This industrial center is the largest settlement still in Ukrainian hands in the Luhansk region, where Russian soldiers have been stepping forward in recent weeks after withdrawing or being driven from other parts of Ukraine, including vicinity of the capital kyiv.
After being initially repelled by a Russian offensive on Severodonetsk, the Ukrainians gradually regained ground there.
The Russian Ministry of Defense, for its part, assured on Saturday that the Ukrainian troops were withdrawing towards Lysytchansk “having suffered critical losses in the fighting for Severodonetsk (up to 90% in several units)”.
The Russian army is trying to conquer all of Donbass, nickname given to the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, partly in the hands of pro-Russian separatists since 2014.