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Amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Wednesday (April 1) that its forces had taken full control of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, Reuters reported. The region had been out of Moscow’s reach since 2022.
Moscow claims full control of the Luhansk region, but a Ukrainian military spokesman said there had been no changes to the battlefield in the area in the past six months, according to Reuters.
Russia has claimed ownership of four regions of Ukraine since the war began in February 2022, but Moscow’s claims are rejected by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and most Western countries as an illegal land grab. According to Reuters, more than 99 percent of Luhansk has long been under Russian control.
Luhansk and Donetsk are two industrialized regions, part of the Donbas region, located in eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Kremlin on Wednesday reiterated its demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from the parts of Donetsk not under Moscow’s control to end the active combat phase. Kyiv has repeatedly rejected Moscow’s demands, calling them absurd.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Russian forces have also taken control of the village of Verkhnya Pysarivka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and Boikove in the important industrialized Zaporizhzhia region in southeastern Ukraine.
Meanwhile, peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv are moving slowly, but progress is complicated by disagreements between the two sides.
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