A Reuters reporter in Lysychansk, captured on Sunday by Russia and its separatist allies, found few residents in a city that was once home to nearly 100,000 people and widespread destruction, testament to the ferocity of the battle to take it.
The fall of Lysychansk to Russia and its proxies was hailed as an important moment by Moscow which is now in total control of the wider Luhansk region, one of the aims of what president Vladimir Putin calls his"special military operation" to eliminate what he has cast as a dangerous threat. It says the city is of little strategic value and that it was able to hold off Russian forces trying to take it and a nearby city for weeks while it took back some territory in the south of the country.
Burnt out cars littered the streets with the wreckage of at least two police patrol vehicles, one upside down, its windscreen riddled with bullets.