Moscow claimed Sunday that its forces and their separatist allies captured the city of Lysychansk, the last major Ukrainian stronghold in the Luhansk region — signaling a potential turning point in Russia’s effort to gain control of eastern Ukraine.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Telegram that its forces and the pro-Russian separatists of the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic “have established full control” over Lysychansk “and a number of nearby settlements.”
The city is a key target in Russia’s battle to capture the Donbas region, an area bordering Russia that is partly controlled by separatists loyal to Moscow. In 2014, they unilaterally established two independent “republics” in the Donbas region, and Russian President Vladimir Putin cited false claims of Ukrainian “genocide” against Russian-speaking residents there as justification for his invasion. Ukraine had been furiously defending the region for weeks, and a Ukrainian presidential adviser had said its fate could be determined in the coming days.
Kyiv did not confirm Russia’s capture of Lysychansk, and a Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman told the BBC on Sunday that the city was not under Russia’s “full control.”
But the spokesman, Yuriy Sak, acknowledged that Ukrainian forces could retreat from parts of the city amid “very intense” Russian attacks. “For Ukrainians, the value of human life is a top priority, so sometimes we may retreat from certain areas so that we can retake them in the future,” Sak...
Misinformation about hantavirus has run rampant on social media, with online users reviving viral COVID-19 theories to spread fake news about the outbreak. From conspiracy theories claiming that...