Despite the Ukrainian army’s withdrawal, the Ukrainian president does not want to give up the city. Russia had previously reported to have captured it entirely. Lysychansk was the last major Ukrainian bastion in Luhansk.

Despite the withdrawal of the Ukrainian army, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy does not yet see the city of Lysychansk in the east of the country as lost. “If the command of our army withdraws people from certain points of the front where the enemy has the greatest advantage in fire, especially Lysychansk, it means only one thing: that thanks to our tactics, thanks to the increased supply of modern weapons, we will come back,” he said in a video message on Sunday.

The Ukrainian army is moving forward – both in the Kharkiv region in the east and the Kherson region in the south and on the Black Sea. The recently recovered Snake Island is a good example. “There will come a day when we will say the same thing about Donbas,” said Zelenskyy. “Ukraine gives up nothing.”

After weeks of defensive fighting, the Ukrainian army announced in the evening that it was withdrawing from Lysychansk in the Luhansk region. The General Staff said that the Russian occupying forces have multiple superiorities in Kyiv. Russia had previously reported that it had taken the big city. The reports from the combat zones can hardly be checked independently. Lysychansk was the last major Ukrainian bastion in the Luhansk region. Its conquest is one of the war goals named by Russia.

Image by Wikimedia (The Presidential Office of Ukraine)/Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY-SA 4.0)