Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, which includes Severodonetsk, said the Russians had destroyed two of the three bridges connecting the city with Lysychansk and the third was old and precarious. Mr. Haidai said: “It is now completely impossible, unfortunately, to drive to the city, to deliver something to the city. “Evacuation is impossible.” He estimated that about 70% of Sheverodonetsk was in Russian hands, adding that the situation for Ukrainian troops was “difficult but under control”. Mr Haidai told the RFE / RL’s Ukrainian Service: “They have the ability to send the injured to hospitals, so there is still access. “It is difficult to hand over weapons or reserves – difficult, but not impossible.” He also told the Associated Press that Ukrainian forces were fighting the Russians “block by block, street by street, house by house, with varying degrees of success.” Key developments: • Amnesty International accuses Russia of indiscriminate use of banned cluster munitions in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, killing and injuring hundreds of civilians. Ukraine’s police chief says victims are among more than 12,000 people whose deaths are being investigated • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his forces have driven Russians from more than 1,000 settlements since the start of the war, promising to release all occupied territories, including Crimea. Occupied by Russia in 2014 • A veteran Georgian commander told Sky News that about 3,000 Britons are fighting for Ukraine against Russia, among 20,000 foreign troops in the country More than 10,000 civilians remain in Severodonetsk – out of a pre-war population of over 100,000. Lysychansk is the other city in Luhansk that is not yet under Russian control, but is regularly bombed by Russian forces. Eduard Basurin, a Russian-backed separatist official in neighboring Donetsk, said Monday that Sheverodonetsk had been closed and that Ukrainian fighters had no choice but to surrender. Mr Haidai denied the allegations, saying “there is no danger of our troops encircling the Luhansk region.” Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 but failed to move as quickly as expected, abandoning efforts to occupy the capital Kyiv and focusing on the Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have held territory since 2014. On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov said Russia’s main goal was to protect the Donetsk and Luhansk democracies in the Donbas region. “In general, the protection of democracies is the main goal of the special military operation,” he told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency. Subscribe to Ukraine War Calendars on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Spreaker Ukraine continues to demand more weapons from Western powers to help defend the rest of its territory in Donbas. Adviser to the President of Ukraine Mykhailo Podolyak said that 1,000 shells, 500 tanks and 1,000 drones were among the items needed for his country to be on an equal footing with Russia in terms of weapons. Russia, meanwhile, says it has destroyed another shipment of US and European weapons and equipment in a rocket attack near a train station in Udachne, northwest of Donetsk.
