Russia-Ukraine Crisis: Ukrainian forces may have to retreat from their last pocket in the Luhansk region to avoid being captured, a Ukrainian official said, as Russian troops press an advance in the east that has shifted the momentum of the three-month-old war. A withdrawal could bring Russian President Vladimir Putin closer to his goal of capturing eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions in full.
However, breaking with the party line in a rare show of opposition to his country’s war in Ukraine, a Communist Party legislative deputy in Russia’s Far East demanded an end to the military operation and withdrawal of Russian forces. “We understand that if our country doesn’t stop the military operation, we’ll have more orphans in our country,” the deputy said at a meeting.
Meanwhile, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the European Union of dithering over a ban on Russian energy, saying the bloc was funding Russia’s war and delay “merely means more Ukrainians being killed”. The EU is seeking a deal this weekend to ban Russian oil deliveries by sea but not pipeline to win over Hungary.