The pro-Russian authorities warned on Monday that Ukraine will send additional troops to the Lugansk region (east), annexed by Russia, after having recaptured Kherson.
“There are reports that more and more forces are being transferred there, just below Svatove, including Kherson, according to our intelligence agencies,” Lugansk military spokesman Andrei Marochko told Russian state television Rossiya-24.
According to Marochko, every day Ukrainian troops try to break through the Russian and pro-Russian defenses in Lugansk, which have been repelling the attacks.
“The situation on the contact line is quite serious. In fact, the enemy tries daily to break through our defenses from different directions, but the guys are adamant, they are not giving up an inch of their land, ”he added.
Russia annexed the Kherson, Lugansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions on September 30, as part of the offensive it launched on February 24 this year.
Moscow had already annexed the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula in 2014. Ukraine and the international community in general do not recognize Russian sovereignty in the annexed regions.
kyiv loyalist Luhansk Governor Sergei Gaidai said on Monday that Ukrainian troops had liberated Makiivka, some 41 kilometers southwest of Svatove.
“Including Makiivka, 12 locations have already been released in the Lugansk region,” Gaidai said on the Telegram social network, quoted by the Spanish news agency EFE.
The Ukrainian governor also said that the Russians continue daily attacks on the already destroyed city of Bilohorivka, west of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk.
Gaidai also reported a “large concentration” in Lugansk of Russian mercenaries and prisoners recently mobilized by the Wagner paramilitary group, controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine recaptured part of the Kherson region on Friday, including the regional capital of the same name, after Moscow ordered the withdrawal of thousands of its troops in the face of kyiv’s counteroffensive.
The pro-Russian authorities have chosen the port city of Henichesk, on the southern bank of the Dnieper River, as the provisional capital of the Kherson region, the official Russian agency TASS reported on Saturday.
The recapture of Kherson is considered one of the most significant successes of the Ukrainian forces in the war with Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Kherson on Monday and hailed the victory of his troops as the “beginning of the end of the war.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine plunged Europe into what is considered the most serious security crisis since World War II (1939-1945).
The number of civilian and military casualties is unknown, but several sources, including the UN, have warned that it will be high.
The war and the sanctions imposed on Russia have also disrupted the world economy, particularly the energy and food sectors, as the world tried to recover from the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Source: TSF
