More than 99% of Luhansk, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claimed as its own in 2022 – something Kyiv and most Western countries have rejected as an illegal land grab – has long been under Russian control.
“Units of the ‘West’ military grouping have completed the liberation of the Luhansk People’s Republic,” the Defence Ministry said in a statement, using Moscow’s preferred name for the region.Luhansk is one of two regions – along with Donetsk – which make up the wider industrialised Donbas area.
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The Kremlin on Wednesday reiterated its demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from the part of Donetsk which Moscow does not control to end what it called the “hot phase” of the war, a demand Kyiv has repeatedly dismissed as absurd.
Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told a Russian television interviewer on Wednesday that a decision by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to pull out troops from all of Donbas would help resolve outstanding diplomatic issues.
“If he took the decision to pull out troops and if we then verified that he had withdrawn the troops, then prospects would, of course, open up for resolving many issues, including the question of ending military action,” Ushakov said.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces had also taken control of the village of Verkhnya Pysarivka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and of Boikove in the Zaporizhzhia region in southeastern Ukraine. Reuters could not independently verify those battlefield assertions.
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