The city, where the mayor says most residential buildings have been destroyed, remains the only part of the Luhansk region in the Donbas under Ukrainian control.
- Mayor of the eastern city of Severodonetsk claims at least 1,500 people have been killed and about 60 percent of residential buildings destroyed.
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia’s offensive in Donbas could leave the eastern region “uninhabited” and that Moscow’s forces want to turn cities like Popasna, Lysychansk and Severodonetsk to ashes.
- To the northwest of the Donbas, shelling killed nine people in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv on Thursday, including a five-month-old child, and wounded another 19, Zelenskyy says.
- Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba says that Kyiv will not be able to counter Russia’s offensive without more heavy weapons.
- US officials say the Biden administration is considering supplying Kyiv with the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which can have a range of hundreds of kilometres.
