Ukrainian soldiers reached the eastern bastion of Lyman on Saturday after surrounding thousands of Russian troops, according to Kyiv, in a military retort to the Kremlin a day after Moscow declared a stretch of land to be part of Russia.
Lyman’s capture would be a severe blow for Russia after President Vladimir Putin declared the annexation of the Donetsk area, as well as three other regions, in a ceremony in Moscow on Friday, which Kyiv and the West lambasted as a farce.
A video tweeted by the president’s chief of staff showed two beaming Ukrainian soldiers taping the yellow-and-blue national flag on the ‘Lyman’ welcome board at the town’s entrance in the northwestern Donetsk region.
‘On October 1, we will raise our state flag and plant it on our territory. Lyman will represent Ukraine ‘Standing on the bonnet of a military vehicle, one of the troops said.
According to a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s eastern military, Russia has 5,000 to 5,500 troops at Lyman, but the number of encircled troops may be fewer due to fatalities.
‘The Russian grouping in the Lyman area is surrounded,’ Serhii Cherevatyi, the spokeswoman, said on television.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not reply quickly to a request for comment.
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