Ukrainian army to leave battered city to avoid encirclement
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — After weeks of ferocious fighting, Ukrainian forces will retreat from a besieged city in the country’s east to avoid encirclement, a regional governor said Friday.
The city of Sievierodonetsk, the administrative center of the Luhansk region, has faced relentless Russian bombardment. Ukrainian troops fought the Russians in house-to-house battles before retreating to the huge Azot chemical factory on the city’s edge, where they remain holed up in its sprawling underground structures in which about 500 civilians also found refuge.