KIEV, June 24. /TASS/. Ukrainian troops have received an order to leave Severodonetsk, the administrative center of the Lugansk area under Kiev’s control, Head of the Kiev-controlled Lugansk regional administration Sergey Gaidai said in a live broadcast on Ukraine’s Dom TV Channel on Friday.

"Unfortunately, yes," Gaidai said, responding to a question about whether the Ukrainian side would have to leave Severodonetsk. "Such a decision has been made," he added. "Both soldiers of the Ukrainian armed forces and the National Guard have already received a command to pull back to new positions, new fortified areas," Gaidai said.

"The point is that it is senseless to hold the positions battered over many months just for the sake of holding them," he explained.

The militia fighters of the Lugansk People’s Republic have been developing an offensive on Severodonetsk and Lisichansk since early March and the seizure of these cities is a top priority for the republic. The cities’ liberation has been complicated since the Ukrainian military has set up multilayered defenses there and is using civilians as a human shield.

As was reported earlier, in the northeast, the allied forces of the LPR people’s militia and the Russian army have driven the Ukrainian military out of Severodonetsk’s residential areas. The Ukrainian troops and militants of the Neo-Nazi Aidar battalion are holed up in the Azot chemical plant in the Severodonetsk industrial zone.

In the past few days, the allied forces of the LPR people’s militia and the Russian army have been moving ahead in their advance south of Lisichansk, encircling the Ukrainian battlegroup in that city and at the Azot chemical plant. According to a source close to the LPR people’s militia, Aidar battalion militants holed up in the Azot chemical complex are expected to surrender en masse.