the "People's Republic of Luhansk" wants an "immediate" referendum in favor of "attachment" to Russia

Cover image: A man on a bicycle on a street in Kadiivka in the Luhansk region (Ukraine), September 19, 2022. ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO / REUTERS

The separatist “People’s Republic of Luhansk” calls for a referendum ” immediate “ in favor of a “attachment” to RussiaRussian state news agency TASS reported.
Ukraine on Monday accused the Russian army of bombing the site of the Pivdennukrainsk nuclear power plant in the south of the country. According to the operator Energoatom, “a powerful explosion occurred just 300 meters from the reactors” of this plant, lending it to a night strike from a Russian missile.
In the Kharkiv region (northeast), bordering Russia, Ukrainian forces say they have taken over thousands of square kilometers this month. But in Kupiansk, the Ukrainian counter-offensive comes up against a pocket of Russian resistance. Civilians flee the east bank of the Oskil River, where Moscow forces are entrenched.
In Donetsk, a stronghold of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, thirteen civilians were killed in a Ukrainian strike on Monday « punitive » in a square in this city that has escaped kyiv’s control since 2014, according to the pro-Moscow mayor.
In the neighboring Luhansk region, the separatists sentenced two employees of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to thirteen years in prisonaccused of ” high treason “for providing “confidential information” to foreign intelligence services.
The Kremlin on Monday called ” lying “ the discovery of hundreds of tombs in a forest near the town of Izioumrecently recaptured by Ukrainian forces.