News - World: Russia says its troops have encircled Lysychansk as the push to drive Ukrainian forces out of the eastern Donbas region nears conclusion. 

The defense ministry said Sunday Russian troops have captured villages surrounding Lysychansk, and were now fighting Ukrainian troops inside the town.

The ministry also said it had struck military infrastructure in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, as well as a base used by foreign fighters on the outskirts of Mykolaiv in the country's south.

Ukrainian forces hit a Russian base with more than 30 strikes in the southern city of Melitopol, the city’s exiled Ukrainian mayor said.

No casualties have been reported from Sunday's attack which hit the area where the city’s airport is located, according to Russia’s RIA news agency.

Another attack on the Russian city of Belgorod near the Ukraine border left at least three people killed, to the regional governor said.

Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported several explosions in the city of nearly 400,000, some 40 km north of the border with Ukraine.

There was a number of blasts in the city of nearly 400,000 some 40km (25 miles) north of the border with Ukraine, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram Sunday.

At least 11 apartment buildings and 39 private residential houses were destroyed, Gladkov added.

“The death of civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Belgorod are a direct act of aggression on the part of Ukraine and require the most severe - including a military - response,” Senior Russian lawmaker Andrei Klishas wrote on Telegram.

Moscow has accused Kiev of carrying out several attacks on Belgorod and other regions bordering Ukraine since the beginning of the Ukraine-Russian conflict.

Kiev has not claimed responsibility but has described the incidents as payback for Russia’s attacks.

Russia is focused on driving Ukrainian forces out of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces in the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Kiev since Russia’s first military involvement in Ukraine in 2014.

Russian-backed forces claimed they had “completely” encircled the strategic city of Lysychansk as the last stronghold of resistance in the eastern region of Luhansk.

Capturing Lysychansk would allow the Russians to push deeper into the wider eastern Donbas, which has become the focus of their attack.

Russia’s military seized Lysychansk’s sister city Sievierodonetsk, across the Siverskiy Donets river, last month after some of the heaviest fighting of the war. Severodonetsk had been the epicenter of the battles in eastern Ukraine for control over Donbas.

“Lysychansk has been brought under control,” Rodion Miroshnik, ambassador to Russia of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, told Russian television. “Unfortunately, it is not yet liberated,” he added.

Zelenskiy adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said that taking Lysychansk would complicate matters strategically for the Russians as they would have to focus on six major cities in the industrialized eastern Donbas region, spreading their forces more thinly.

“The more Western weapons come to the front, the more the picture changes in favor of Ukraine,” Arestovych added. Ukraine has repeatedly appealed for more weapons from the West, saying its forces are heavily outgunned.

On Saturday, Russia said it had destroyed five Ukrainian army command posts in the Donbas and Mykolaiv regions with high-precision weapons.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its missiles also struck three storage sites in Zaporizhzhia.

The Russian air force struck a Ukrainian weapons and equipment base at a tractor factory in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, the ministry said.

In a television address on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said, it would be a “very difficult path” to win the war. 

Source: Press TV