“The frequency” of the bombing of Lysychansk, a city under fire from Russian artillery in eastern Ukraine, is “enormous,” said the governor of the Lugansk region, Serguiï Gaidaï, on Wednesday evening, June 29.
Also readThese Russian oligarchs are angry about the war in Ukraine
“We are witnessing a peak in fighting intensity,” continued the official on Ukrainian television, specifying that before the war there were “about 15,000 civilians” in this city of almost 100,000 inhabitants, “but their evacuation at that time was too dangerous Stage”. “The city is constantly bombarded with large-caliber weapons,” Serguiï Gaïdaï said in his daily situation report, noting that “fighting continued (especially) on the outskirts of the city. The Russians “have a large number of brought vehicles and soldiers,” he said, before adding: “The bombardments and enemy attacks don’t stop.”
Lysychansk is the target of Russian forces following their full occupation of Severodonetsk, its neighboring city, after several weeks of fighting that devastated the two cities and also claimed the lives of dozens of civilians. It is the last major city yet to be captured by the Russians in the Lugansk region, one of the two provinces of the Donbass industrial area that Moscow wants to fully control.
Also ReadUkraine: Syria Recognizes Independence of Two Pro-Russian Territories
For his part, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the regional governor of Donetsk, the other region of Donbass, stated that one civilian was killed and eight others injured on Wednesday. “The front line is constantly being bombarded by Russian ‘missiles’,” he regretted, but stressed that evacuations of civilians were continuing at the moment, a “necessary (but) extremely complicated” task, he added, he said on Telegram.