A satellite image shows damaged Pavlograd Bridge in western Severodonetsk, Ukraine
(Picture: via REUTERS)Every bridge leading to the key Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk has been destroyed by Russian forces, a regional governor says.
The last bridge linking it to a Ukrainian-held city on the other side of the river has been destroyed.
All routes for evacuating citizens and supplying aid to the eastern city have therefore been cut off, Head of Luhansk regional military аdministration Serhiy Haida said.
Mr Haida said: “All bridges leading to the town were destroyed.”
“Evacuation [and] supply of aid is impossible.”
Russia is trying to gain a foothold in central Severodonetsk, according to the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the battle for Severodonetsk is “terrifying” and the human cost “very high” during his daily address to the Ukrainian people on Monday evening.
He also spoke about the strategic importance of the city, which sits in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
In an earlier address, Mr Zelensky had described Severodonetsk and Lysychansk as “dead cities”.
Severodonetsk is where Jordan Gatley’s family said he was shot and killed - the second British national to have been killed while fighting in Ukraine.
Ukrainian troops remaining in the city must “surrender or die”, a military representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic has said.
Severodonetsk, a manufacturing centre in the Luhansk region, is key in Russia’s quest to conquer the Donbas and would be one of the final cities in the region to fall to Vladimir Putin if it were taken.
The city has been under intense bombardment for the past few weeks as the fight for control of the Donbas region intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military’s daily roundup reported Russian forces in the eastern Donbas region were "creating conditions for the development of the offensive on Sloviansk", and an offensive on the towns of Lyman, Yampil and Siversk - all west of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the Luhansk region, said: “About 500 civilians remain on the grounds of the Azot (chemicals) plant... 40 of them are children.” The industrial zone was said to be under heavy bombardment by Russian forces.
