Ukraine war: Severodonetsk bridges are inaccessible as Russia gets closer to seizing control of a major city.

70 percent of the city is now under Russian control, according to the governor of the Luhansk region, making it hard to evacuate people.

All bridges leading to the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk are currently unusable, preventing the evacuation of inhabitants and the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk area, which includes Severodonetsk, stated that two of the three bridges connecting the city to Lysychansk had been demolished by the Russians, and the third is old and unstable.

Mr. Haidai said: “Unfortunately, it is currently impossible to drive into the city or bring items to the city.

“Evacuation cannot occur.”

According to his estimation, around 70 percent of Severodonetsk is in Russian hands, and the situation for Ukrainian troops is “tough but under control.”

Mr. Haidai told the Ukrainian service of RFE/RL: “They can transport wounded individuals to hospitals, so there is still access.

It is difficult to transfer weapons or reserves, but not impossible.

Additionally, he told The Associated Press that Ukrainian soldiers are battling the Russians “block by block, street by street, home by house” with varying degrees of success.

Amnesty International has accused Russia of using banned cluster munitions indiscriminately in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians. • Workers are exhuming victims from another mass grave near Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv. According to Ukraine’s police chief, the victims are among the over 12,000 whose deaths are being probed. Since the start of the battle, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, his forces have expelled the Russians from over a thousand settlements, and he has vowed to liberate all occupied land, including Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014. A veteran Georgian commander told that perhaps 3,000 Britons are among the 20,000 international troops fighting for Ukraine against Russia.

More than 10,000 civilians remain in Severodonetsk, where there were more than 100,000 before the war.

The only city in Luhansk not yet under Russian control is Lysychansk, which is constantly bombarded by Russian forces.

On Monday, Eduard Basurin, a representative of the Russian-backed separatists in neighboring Donetsk, stated that Severodonetsk had been cut off, leaving Ukrainian fighters with no alternative but to surrender.

Mr. Haidai denounced this as “a falsehood” and added, “Our troops are not at risk of being besieged in the Luhansk region.”

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 but failed to progress as swiftly as anticipated, abandoning ambitions to seize Kiev and refocusing its attention on the Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists had held territory since 2014.

Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for the Kremlin, stated on Monday that Russia’s primary objective is to preserve the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, which comprise the Donbas region.

He stated to the Russian news agency RIA, “The primary objective of the special military operation is the protection of the republics.

Ukraine continues to petition western countries for additional armaments to defend its remaining Donbas territory.

Mykhailo Podolyak, the adviser to the president of Ukraine, stated that his country would require 1,000 howitzers, 500 tanks, and 1,000 drones to be on par with Russia in terms of armaments.

In the meantime, Russia reported that a missile strike near a train station in Udachne, northwest of Donetsk, had destroyed another consignment of US and European weapons and equipment.