The Russian government announced on Monday that its forces now control the entirety of Ukraine’s Lugansk region, marking a significant development in the ongoing conflict.
Leonid Pasechnik, head of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR)—the Russian-installed authority governing the region—confirmed that all remaining settlements had come under Russian control. If independently verified, this would make Lugansk the first Ukrainian region fully occupied by Russian forces since 2022, and the second since the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Russian troops previously held all of Lugansk Oblast in July 2022 after capturing the key cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. However, that control was briefly challenged in September of the same year when a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kharkov region managed to penetrate into Lugansk, notably reaching the town of Bilohorivka. Intense fighting in the area has continued for more than two years.
Following Ukraine’s 2022 push, Russian forces still retained over 95% of the region, with Kyiv’s presence reduced to a small cluster of villages near the Lugansk-Kharkov border. By early June 2025, Ukrainian forces were reportedly holding just two villages—Hrekivka and Tverdokhlibove. Russia captured the former earlier this month and the latter, according to Pasechnik, fell under Russian control on Monday.
Ukrainian troops are expected to attempt to maintain positions in nearby forest belts along the regional border—similar to their tactics in the Kursk region earlier this year—allowing President Volodymyr Zelensky to claim a continued presence, even after significant battlefield losses.
With full control of Lugansk now claimed, Russia reportedly holds approximately:
75% of Donetsk Oblast
72% of Zaporizhia Oblast
66% of Kherson Oblast
All of Crimea
Small but expanding pockets in Kharkov, Sumy, and now Dnipropetrovsk regions
In total, Russia is believed to control roughly 19% of Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory, with Moscow’s official territorial claims encompassing about 21%.