An admission of failure.
The governor of the Luhansk region said on Monday that the situation in Severodonetsk, a key city in the east of the country plagued by intense fighting with Russian troops, was getting complicated.
“The fighting is very fierce in Severodonetsk.
Our defenders managed to counterattack and liberate half of the city, but the situation got worse for us,” Sergiy Gaidai told Ukrainian 1+1 television without giving further details.
Read alsoBesieged city, hidden civilians, Russian Terminator tanks: Severodonetsk, the “Mariupol of Donbass”
According to him, the bombardments have further intensified on Severodonetsk and Lyssytchansk, a strategic neighboring city to "hold the line of defense".
The Russians are "destroying everything with their usual scorched earth tactic" so that "there is nothing left to defend."
“Critical losses”
This industrial center is the largest settlement still in Ukrainian hands in the Luhansk region, where Russian soldiers have been stepping forward in recent weeks after withdrawing or being driven from other parts of Ukraine, including vicinity of the capital kyiv.
After being initially repelled by a Russian offensive on Severodonetsk, the Ukrainians gradually regained ground there.
The Russian Ministry of Defense for its part assured on Saturday that the Ukrainian troops were withdrawing towards Lysytchansk “having suffered critical losses in the fighting for Severodonetsk”.
The Russian army is trying to conquer all of Donbass, nickname given to the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, partly in the hands of pro-Russian separatists since 2014.
