Ukraine war: Five things you need to know about the conflict on Tuesday
Russian attacks laid down a curtain of fire Tuesday across areas of eastern Ukraine where pockets of resistance are denying Moscow full military control of the region.
“Today everything that can burn is on fire,” Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, told The Associated Press.
AFP quoted Haidai as saying the Russian army was inflicting "catastrophic destruction" on Lysychansk, a city neighbouring Sievierodonetsk in the Donbas.
The Luhansk governor said strikes were continuing on the three bridges already destroyed between the twin cities, further cutting off the 100,000 inhabitants of Lysychansk from other Kyiv-controlled territories.
The town is key towards gaining control of the whole of the Donbas, an industrial basin partially controlled since 2014 by Russian-backed separatists.
A few kilometres away, the Russians "fully control" the frontline village of Tochkivka, Ukrainian authorities said on Tuesday.
According to the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russian forces want to cut off Ukrainian communication lines along the highway between Bakhmut and Lysychansk.
In Sievierodonetsk, Ukrainian defenders have been holding on to the Azot chemical plant in the industrial outskirts. About 500 civilians are sheltering at the plant, and Serhiy Haidai said the Russian forces are turning the area “into ruins”.
“It is a sheer catastrophe,” Haidai told the AP in written comments. “Our positions are being fired at from howitzers, multiple rocket launchers, large-calibre artillery, missile strikes”.
Airstrikes on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk have ruined more than 10 residential buildings and a police station, the president's office said.
The Russian military currently controls about 95% of the Luhansk
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