Donbass republic fully liberated – Russian defense minister
Samizdat | July 3, 2022
The last remnants of Ukrainian forces have been driven out of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced on Sunday. He reported the news to President Vladimir Putin, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Shoigu said Russian troops and Donbass forces had completely seized Lisichansk, the last major city which had remained under Ukrainian control since 2014, when the LPR declared its independence shortly after a coup in Kiev.
Russia and Ukraine reported heavy fighting around Lisichansk earlier this week, with the most fierce combat occurring at the city’s oil refinery.
News of the capture of Lisichansk comes after Ukrainian troops retreated from Severodonetsk, a nearby city on the opposite side of the Seversky Donets River, last week. The fighting for Severodonetsk had lasted for several months.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
Noted with relief. I wish — given that I’m not up-to-the-minute aware by any stretch — that this report had addressed the status of the Donetsk PR….
I also wish that I were not so ignorant in many ways…e.g., I wonder what percentage of the refugee traffic was/is from the Donbass…will that stream start flowing very soon in the opposite direction? This situation needs to ‘stabilize’ and assume some sense of normalcy…but of course I suppose the belligerent US and the rest of the West will not be pursuing “normalcy” in any human, realistic, practical sense of the word….
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