Ukraine claimed on Saturday to have entered the strategic city of Lyman, a major railway hub in eastern Ukraine, in the Donetsk region, which Russia annexed on Friday, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said.
“Ukrainian air strike forces are entering Lyman in Donetsk region,” the ministry said on Twitter, hours after the army announced it had “surrounded” thousands of Russian soldiers in the city.
“Russian forces are surrounded in Lyman,” Ukrainian army spokesman Sergei Cherevatiy told Ukrainian television, quoted by the French news agency AFP.
According to the spokesman, more than 5,000 Russian soldiers had dug in and around Lyman town in recent days, but their numbers may have dwindled due to fighting since then.
“Russian soldiers based in Lyman approached their superiors with a request to withdraw, but this was rejected,” the spokesman was quoted as saying by the Spanish news agency EFE.
The governor of the neighboring Luhansk region, Sergei Gaidai, wrote on social media that the besieged Russian soldiers have the option to “run away, die together or surrender,” AFP reported.
A Ukrainian army spokesman said troops from kyiv had regained control of five villages around Lyman, increasing pressure on trapped Russian soldiers.
“The stabilization measures are still there,” he said, according to EFE.
The same spokesman said that almost all escape routes or supply routes for Russian forces in the area are blocked.
The information about the war in Ukraine published by the two sides cannot be easily verified by independent sources.
Donetsk, in Donbass, is one of four regions annexed by Russia on Friday following wartime referendums whose legitimacy has not been recognized by Ukraine or the international community.
In addition to Donetsk, Russian President Vladimir Putin formalized the annexation of Lugansk, as well as Donbass, Kherson and Zaporizhia (south).
Russia had already annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014, also after a referendum held under military occupation.
On Friday, a senior pro-Russian separatist official admitted that the Russians were fighting in Lyman to the limit, in a situation he described as difficult, according to AFP.
After Moscow claimed control of eastern Ukraine as part of the offensive that began on February 24 this year, Ukrainian forces launched a counteroffensive in recent weeks that allowed them to recapture part of the territory.
The Ukrainian army made significant territorial gains in the Kharkiv region, northwest of Donetsk, where Lyman is located.
Ukrainian forces are also trying to advance in the Donetsk region, where the Russians are holding out, according to AFP.
Ukraine has received weapons from Western allies, which will have been decisive for the counteroffensive launched by its forces.
Due to the military setbacks in Ukraine, Putin decreed on September 21 a partial mobilization that included 300,000 reservists.
Since then, thousands of Russians have fled to neighboring countries to escape the mobilization.
Source: TSF
