Russia claims full control of Ukraine’s Luhansk region

Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces had taken full control of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, suggesting they had seized a small remaining area that had stayed beyond their reach since 2022.

More than 99% of Luhansk, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claimed as its own in 2022 - a move Kyiv and most Western countries reject 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.

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Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield report, and there was no immediate response from Ukraine.

Luhansk is one of two regions, along with Donetsk, that make up the wider industrialised Donbas area.

The Kremlin on Wednesday (1 April) reiterated its demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from the part of Donetsk still under Kyiv’s control to end what it called the “hot phase” of the war - a demand Ukraine has repeatedly dismissed as absurd.

Russia’s Defence Ministry also said its forces had taken control of the village of Verkhnya Pysarivka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, and of Boikove in the Zaporizhzhia region in south-eastern Ukraine.

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