Latest news of Russia’s war in Ukraine on September 12

Russians flee the strategic city of Luhansk, according to Ukrainian military In a statement this Sunday, the Ukrainian Army General Staff said that Russian forces had abandoned the city of Svatove in the Luhansk region, a city that until this Saturday was still 40 kilometers (25 mi) beyond the known front line of the Ukrainian advance. Svatove has been a major hub on Russian resupply routes to the front lines further south, along the borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. “The occupiers have abandoned Svatove in the Luhansk region,” the General Staff office said in a Facebook post. “They hurried away in four Kamaz trucks, twenty Tigr AV [vehículos blindados] and stole more than 20 cars from local residents.” CNN cannot independently verify the Ukrainian account. The General Staff office also stated that “as a result of the success of our troops’ counteroffensive in the Kharkiv direction, Russian troops frantically abandon their positions and flee with the loot into the temporarily occupied territories or into the territory of the Russian Federation.” He referred to an alleged episode in which, he said, “150 service members of the armed forces of the Russian Federation left in a convoy of Borshchova and Artemivka from the Kharkiv region in two stolen buses, a truck and 19 cars.” Borshchova is north of the city of Kharkiv, a few kilometers from Ukraine’s border with Russia.