Russian and Ukrainian troops engaged in close-quarter combat in an eastern Ukraine city Sunday as Moscow’s soldiers, supported by intense shelling, attempted to gain strategic footholds for conquering the region in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance.
By ELENA BECATOROS and RICARDO MAZALAN
The two eastern cities span the strategically-important Siverskiy Donetsk river. They are the last major areas under Ukrainian control in Luhansk province, which makes up the Donbas together with neighboring Donetsk. In the wider Kharkiv region, Russian troops still held about 30% of the territory, while Kyiv’s troops had recaptured another 5%, the governor said.
Civilians who reached the eastern city of Pokrovsk, about 130 kilometers south of Lysychansk, said they held out as long as they could before fleeing the Russian advance. On Saturday, he said, one civilian died and four were injured after a Russian shell hit a high-rise apartment building. The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, questioned the Kremlin’s strategy of assembling a huge military effort to take Sieverodonetsk, saying it was proving costly for Russia and would bring few returns.
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