Ukraine enters the Luhansk region, which Russia controls almost completely

The Ukrainian army has begun to recapture towns in Lugansk, the region of the Donbass zone that for months was almost entirely in the hands of Russian troops.

kyiv had been keeping an eye on this territory for some time, one of the four that Moscow has illegally annexed – along with Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.

"Well, now it's official: the liberation of the Lugansk region has begun," the governor of the Ukrainian zone, Sergei Haidai, announced on Tuesday on his Telegram social network account, without specifying the enclaves in which it flies again. the yellow and blue flag of their country.

The governor has not hidden, however, that there is intense fighting in some areas.

The UK Ministry of Defense certifies that local troops are advancing east of the Oskil River, in the northeast of the country,

Russia is desperately trying to hold some positions in the eastern area despite the lack of food and uniforms, while at the same time trying to lighten the enlistment of recruits to swell its ranks in the occupied areas, according to Haidai.

Some soldiers, he added, have even returned to the other side of the Russian border given the impossibility of continuing on the front lines.

To fill this void, the Ukrainian governor assures that there are training camps in Lugansk where prisoners brought from Russian jails are being hastily prepared to join the ranks of Wagner as mercenaries, a group promoted by Dimitriy Utkin, a tycoon friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In hospitals, Haidai pointed out, many civilian patients are sent home to make room for the high number of wounded troops.

In fact, the pro-Russian authorities in Lugansk have recognized that the situation is "alarming" in the town of Svatove due to the advance of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, although they consider that it is still "under control", according to the Lugansk representative in Moscow, Rodion Miroshnik. reported the agency Efe.

A possible Ukrainian attack on the road between Svatove and the city of Kreminna would reduce the supply capacity of the Kremlin troops deployed in eastern Ukraine, British intelligence said on Wednesday.

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The Russian Ministry of Defense itself, in the maps with which it reports daily on the conflict, acknowledges that they are retreating both on the eastern front and in the south of Ukraine.

In the south, where the Kherson region is the scene of the other front of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, the withdrawal of the invading soldiers is accompanied by the destruction of their own ammunition and of the bridges to prevent the advance of kyiv, as well as the placement of mines on roads, infrastructure and even in houses, according to the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced that his military is regaining control of dozens of enclaves that were occupied.

official annexation

The Ukrainian advance in the east occurs on the same day that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has signed the decree of entry into Russia of the four annexed territories, a gesture to which no country or institution in the world grants official status.

The president has also signed a document by which he considers Russia from this moment to be the owner of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which its military have occupied since the first days of the invasion, which began on February 24.

The signature stamped by Putin calls for the annexation of more than 15% of the 600,000 square kilometers of Ukraine.

Since 2014, Moscow has also illegally occupied the Crimean peninsula, which raises the portion of the neighboring country that it considers Russian to more than 22%.

"They will be Russia forever," says the Kremlin spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, who insists on going against the current and ignoring the new package of sanctions provided by the European Union.

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