KYIV (Reuters) – The Ukrainian army announced on Saturday that it had surrounded several thousand Russian soldiers in the town of Lyman, in eastern Ukraine, a key stronghold in a region which Moscow has just celebrated with great fanfare. annexation.
The Russian Lyman forces represent between 5,000 and 5,500 soldiers but the encircled troops could be less numerous due to the losses suffered and the attempts of some units to escape the encirclement, specified a spokesman for the Ukrainian army for the east of the country.
“The Russian regrouping in the Lyman region is surrounded,” declared Serhii Cherevati.
The capture of Lyman, a city that the Russian army uses as a logistics and transport base for its military operations in the north of the Donetsk region, would be the most important military victory recorded by Kyiv since the clear counter-offensive launched in the Kharkiv region last month.
Russia’s Defense Minister did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Friday, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, officially declared the annexation of the province of Donetsk and those of Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporijjia, during a ceremony in Moscow. An annexation justified according to him by the “right to self-determination of peoples” but immediately condemned by Westerners.
Kyiv called the ceremony a farce and promised to liberate all Ukrainian territory from Russian military occupation.
According to the spokesman for the Ukrainian army, the capture of Lyman would allow Kyiv to advance in the Luhansk region, which Moscow announced in early July that it would control in full.
“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbass. It is an opportunity to advance towards Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk, and it is very important psychologically”, he added.
Military operations in the area are continuing and Russian troops are trying in vain to break the encirclement, he said.
“Some surrender, they have many killed and wounded, but the operation is not over,” he said.
The Ukrainian governor of Luhansk, in exile, declared for his part that Russian soldiers had requested the right to leave the encircled area but that their request had been rejected. The Ukrainian General Staff declared Reuters not to have this information.
(Report Pavel Polityuk, French version Marc Angrand)
by Tom Balmforth and Pavel Polityuk