The Ukrainian army and the Russian troops are involved in heavy battles for the city of Lisiciansk, the last Ukrainian-controlled town in the Luhansk region of the Donbass coal basin (east). „Fortunately, the city is not surrounded and it is under the control of the Ukrainian army,” said Ruslan Muziciuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian National Guard. Earlier, Moscow-backed local separatists said the city had been „completely surrounded”. The fall of Lisiciansk would allow the Russian army to advance towards Slaviansk, about sixty kilometers west, which is already under Russian artillery fire, and towards Kramatorsk, another large city in Donbass, which is bombarded daily. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says 2,610 Ukrainian villages and towns are under Russian occupation, and several hundred of them have been destroyed and will have to be completely rebuilt. The Ukrainian army, he says, has managed to free 1,027 localities. The Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that the enemy was suffering heavy losses on all fronts.
