All bridges in the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk are now impassable, making it impossible to remove civilians and enter humanitarian aid.
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 is old and unsafe.
Haidai said: “It is now completely impossible, unfortunately, to drive into the city, to deliver something to the city.
“Evacuation is impossible.”
He estimated that about 70% of Severodonetsk is in Russian hands, adding that the situation of Ukrainian troops is “difficult but under control.”
Haidai told the Ukrainian RFE / RL service: “They have the ability to send the injured to hospitals, so there is still access.
“It’s hard to deliver weapons or reserves, difficult, but not impossible.”
He also told The Associated Press that Ukrainian forces are fighting the Russians “block by block, street by street, house by house, with varying degrees of success.”
Key developments: • Amnesty International has accused Russia of indiscriminately using banned cluster munitions in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians. Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv. The head of the Ukrainian police says the victims are among the more than 12,000 people whose deaths are being investigated. • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his forces have expelled Russians from more than 1,000 settlements since the war began, promising to liberate all occupied territory, including Crimea, which was taken by Russia in 2014 • A veteran Georgian commander he told Sky News that some 3,000 Britons are fighting for Ukraine against Russia, among 20,000 foreign soldiers in the country.
More than 10,000 civilians remain in Severodonetsk, a pre-war population of more than 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 on Monday that Severodonetsk had been blocked and that Ukrainian fighters had no choice but to surrender.
Mr Haidai dismissed the allegations as “a lie” but added: “There is no threat that our troops will be surrounded in the Luhansk region.”
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, but did not advance as quickly as expected, abandoning efforts to take the capital Kyiv and shift its focus to the Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have had territory since 2014. .
On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia’s main goal was to protect the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which make up the Donbass region.
He told Russia’s RIA news agency: “In general, the protection of republics is the main goal of the special military operation.”
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Ukraine continues to demand more weapons from Western powers to help defend its remaining territory in the Donbas.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said 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, said it had destroyed another U.S. and European shipment of weapons and equipment in a missile attack near a railway station in Udachne, northwest of Donetsk.