Russian forces now control “most” of eastern Ukraine’s Severodonetsk, the scene of fierce battles for days as the Russian army tries to seize it, the local governor said Tuesday.
“Unfortunately, today, Russian troops control most of the city,” the governor of the Lugansk region, Sergiy Gaiday, said in a video. He said “90 percent” of the city was destroyed.
He said there was now “no possibility to leave Severodonetsk.”
Moscow’s forces appeared to be advancing in their goal of seizing the key city, with Gaiday several hours earlier saying they controlled “half” of it.
He nonetheless said that Kyiv’s army still “holds the defenses in their current positions.”
He added that the Ukrainian military was not in danger of being “surrounded.”
“The fear that our military will be surrounded somewhere… It will not happen,” he said, adding that the soldiers were “constantly communicating” with Ukrainian authorities.
An evacuation bus had to stop its mission from taking people out of Severodonetsk Monday after a French journalist traveling with it was killed by Russian shelling.
