This week, for the third time since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia claimed it fully occupied Ukraine’s Luhansk region.
The Russian military has held almost all of Luhansk – one of four eastern regions that Moscow has illegally sought to annex – since the first year of the conflict.
It’s unclear why Russia felt the need to announce -again – that its forces had “completed the liberation of the entire territory of the Luhansk People’s Republic,” as it calls the region.
Analysts note that the Russia Defense ministry has a habit of exaggerating advances when the frontlines are scarcely changing.
Russian gains in Ukraine slowed in the first…