Inside Ukraine’s bombarded Luhansk region: ‘Everything is on fire’
- Russia controls 95 per cent of the area, but pockets of resistance have stopped its forces from overrunning it completely
- Kharkiv also came under heavy Russian shelling, with15 civilians killed and 16 wounded in the city and nearby region
01:55
Russia tells Ukraine to end ‘senseless resistance’ and lay down arms in fight for Sievierodonetsk
Russian attacks laid down a curtain of fire on Tuesday across areas of eastern Ukraine where pockets of resistance are denying Moscow full military control of the region, almost four months after the Kremlin unleashed its invasion.
“Today everything that can burn is on fire,” Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, told Associated Press.
Russia’s war has caused alarm over food supplies from Ukraine to the rest of the world and gas supplies from Russia, as well as raising questions about security in western Europe.
The Russian military currently controls about 95 per cent of the Luhansk region. But Moscow has struggled for weeks to overrun it completely, despite deploying additional troops and possessing a massive advantage in military assets.
“With the help of tactical movements, the Ukrainian army is strengthening defences in the Luhansk region,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address. “That really is where the toughest situation is now.”
In the city of Sievierodonetsk, the hotspot of the fighting, Ukrainian defenders held on to the Azot chemical plant in the industrial outskirts. About 500 civilians are sheltering at the plant, and Haidai said the Russian forces are turning the area “into ruins”.