RRussian attacks on Tuesday threw a curtain of fire into areas of eastern Ukraine where pockets of resistance are stripping Moscow of full military control of the region, nearly four months after the Kremlin invasion began.
“Today, anything that can burn is on fire,” Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, told The UK Time News.
Russia’s war has alarmed Ukraine’s food supplies to the rest of the world and Russia’s gas supplies, while raising questions about security in Western Europe.
The Russian army currently controls around 95% of the Luhansk region. But Moscow struggled for weeks to completely invade, despite deploying additional troops and possessing a huge advantage in military means.
“With the help of tactical movements, the Ukrainian army is strengthening the defenses in the Luhansk region,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address. “That’s really where the most difficult situation is now.”
In the town of Severodonetsk, the hotspot of the fighting, Ukrainian defenders clung to the Azot chemical plant in the industrial outskirts. About 500 civilians are sheltering in the factory, and Haidai said Russian forces were turning the area “into rubble”.
Follow the latest updates below.
.