The militias of the self-proclaimed republic of Lugansk (RPL) announced this Saturday that together with the Russian troops they entered Lisichanskthe last Ukrainian stronghold in that region of eastern Ukrainewhere there is already fighting within the city.
“The people’s militia and the allied forces of the Russian Federation entered the city of Lisichansk. The fighting is already taking place in the urban area,” said Andréi Marochko, lieutenant colonel of the Lugansk militia, quoted by the Russian agency TASS.
Lisichansk is located in the northwest of the Lugansk region, separated only by the Severodonetsk River from its twin city Severodonetsk, the scene of intense fighting in recent weeks and from which Ukrainian troops withdrew this Friday.
“By this time the mine located in the Lisichansk Territory has already been seized. Our units also entered the so-called gelatin factory,” added Marochko.
The Kremlin advances in its objectives
The fall of Severodonetsk and the eventual capture of Lisichansk will allow the Kremlin to claim that it has occupied the entire Luhansk region and thus fulfilled part of its stated goal of “liberating” the entire Luhansk region. donbasalso made up of neighboring Donetsk.
Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister, Hanna Maliar, called today on Facebook not to comment on troop movements on social networks, since this harms the progress of military operations, “as happened yesterday and the day before yesterday in Severodonetsk.”
However, the Ukrainian authorities maintain that the advances of the Russian forces in the eastern regions of the country will not mean a significant change in the course of the campaign.
The military command in kyiv considers that the resistance offered in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions has managed to wear down the Russian Army and has bought time for Ukraine to receive heavy Western weapons that will allow it to counter Russia’s superiority, especially in artillery.
Russia strikes from Belarus
The kyiv authorities denounced today that six Russian Tu-22M3 bombers, which had taken off from the Russian “Shaikovka” airfield, used Belarusian airspace to launch 12 cruise missiles against areas of northern Ukraine.
“This is the first case of an aircraft attack from Belarusian airspace. Today’s shelling is directly related to the Kremlin’s efforts to involve Belarus in the war in Ukraine as a direct participant,” the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry charged.
The attack coincided with the visit to Russia of the Belarusian president, Alexandr Lukashenko, to whom the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, informed him that in the coming months Moscow will supply the Armed Forces of Belarus with Iskander-M missiles, capable of carrying nuclear weapons. .
Thousand artillery shells per hour
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said today that Russian troops launch up to a thousand artillery shells every hour to try to undermine the morale of the Ukrainian forces.
“They launch a thousand projectiles at us every hour. Unfortunately, the Russians have inexhaustible resources. The only thing that can be opposed to this is effective weapons with another employment doctrine, with precision attacks,” the minister told the ICTV television channel.
According to the advisor to the Ukrainian Presidency Mijailo Podoliak, Russia has changed its initial strategy and is now betting on a long war, relying on the quantitative superiority of its arsenal
“The next three months will be extremely difficult. But we are prepared to fight at any level of intensity,” the high-ranking official told the Populiarnaya Politika YouTube channel.
In any case, Podoliak stressed that Ukraine will agree to negotiate a peace plan with Russia “only from positions of strength”, when the situation on the battlefronts favors the Ukrainian army.