Russia says its troops have taken full control of Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine

MOSCOW, April 1 (Reuters) - The Russian Defence Ministry said on Wednesday that its forces had taken full control of the ​Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, suggesting they had wrested control of ‌a small sliver of land which had remained beyond their reach since 2022.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield report and a Ukrainian military spokesperson said there had been no battlefield ​changes in the area in the last six months.

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More than 99% ​of Luhansk, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claimed as its ⁠own in 2022 - something Kyiv and most Western countries have rejected as an ​illegal land grab - has long been under Russian control.

“Units of the ‘West’ military grouping have ​completed the liberation of the Luhansk People’s Republic,” the Defence Ministry said in a statement, using Moscow’s preferred name for the region.

Luhansk is one of two regions - along with Donetsk - which ​make up the wider industrialised Donbas area.

The Kremlin on Wednesday reiterated its demand that ​Ukrainian forces withdraw from the part of Donetsk which Moscow does not control to end ‌what it ⁠called the “hot phase” of the war, a demand Kyiv has repeatedly dismissed as absurd.

Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told a Russian television interviewer on Wednesday that a decision by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to pull out troops from all ​of Donbas would help ​resolve outstanding diplomatic ⁠issues.

“If he took the decision to pull out troops and if we then verified that he had withdrawn the troops, ​then prospects would, of course, open up for resolving many ​issues, including ⁠the question of ending military action,” Ushakov said.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces had also taken control of the village of Verkhnya Pysarivka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and ⁠of ​Boikove in the Zaporizhzhia region in southeastern Ukraine. ​Reuters could not independently verify those battlefield assertions.

Reporting by Reuters Moscow Bureau Additional reporting by Olena Harmash in ​Kyiv Writing by Andrew Osborn Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Andrew Heavens, Ron Popeski and Deepa Babington

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