The Ukrainian army took full control of the city of Lyman, in the Donetsk region annexed by Russia, a day after the withdrawal of Russian troops, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Sunday.
“Starting at 12:30 [10:30 em Lisboa]Lyman is completely free [do exército russo]. Thanks to our military,” Zelensky said in a video posted on social media, according to the French news agency AFP.
Lyman is a major railway hub in the Donetsk region, which Russia annexed on Friday along with Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia.
Russia announced the withdrawal of its forces from Lyman on Saturday, shortly after the Ukrainian army said it had surrounded thousands of Russian soldiers in the area.
“Threatened by siege, Allied troops were withdrawn from Lyman to more favorable positions,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement, referring to a post where Moscow-controlled forces had deployed around 5,000 soldiers.
In southern Ukraine, Zelensky’s hometown of Krivyi Rih today suffered a Russian drone attack that hit a school, Dnipropetrovsk region governor Valentyn Reznichenko said. .
Russia, in recent weeks, has begun using Iranian-made drones to attack targets in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian air force said today it shot down five Iranian-made drones overnight in the south of the country, while two managed to break through air defenses.
The information on military activity published by the two parties to the conflict cannot be easily verified by independent sources.
The war in Ukraine was triggered by Russia’s invasion of the country on February 24 this year.
The number of civilian and military casualties is unknown, but several sources, including the UN, have admitted that they must be very high.
Source: TSF
