A shell crater on a street in Rubizhne, Luhansk People's RepublicLUGANSK, Apr 1Sergei Hortiv, the mayor of Rubizhne, who disappeared almost a month ago, told RIA Novosti that he was in the part of the city controlled by the Lugansk People's Republic and intended to stay there, because they wanted to kill him on the Ukrainian side. «I did not try to contact the Ukrainian side because they tried to kill me. As the mayor of the city of Kremennaya Struk, Vladimir Alekseevich, they simply shot him in the courtyard of the house,» Hortiv said. Now Hortiv remains in the city and deals with life support issues, including the distribution of humanitarian aid to residents.Western media: Azov militants are not Nazis. Because they are not Germans On the outskirts of the city of Rubizhne, there are now battles between the forces of the LPR and Russia on the one hand and Ukrainian troops on the other. To the southeast of Rubizhne are Severodonetsk and Lysichansk, the only major settlements in the LNR under Kyiv's rule. On March 25, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that since the end of February, the republic has regained control over 93% of the territory of the former Luhansk region of Ukraine, within whose borders it was proclaimed. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces strike only at military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops and , on March 25, completed the main tasks of the first stage — significantly reduced the combat potential of Ukraine. The main goal in the Russian military department was called the liberation of Donbass.
