TOP HEADLINES

• Russian forces will focus on trying to seize all of the Donetsk region, having forced Ukrainian troops to withdraw from the last major city in the neighboring region of Luhansk, according to the governor of Luhansk. "In terms of the military, it is bad to leave positions, but there is nothing critical (in the loss of Lysychansk). We need to win the war, not the battle for Lysychansk," Serhiy Gaidai said.

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed to regain lost territory in eastern Ukraine with the help of long-range Western weapons. He said Ukraine would hit back with artillery such as the U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket launchers.

• Ahead of a meeting of countries and organizations in Switzerland to hash out a "Marshall Plan" to rebuild Ukraine, Zelenskyy warned of the "colossal" work ahead.

• In Sloviansk, west of Lysychansk, in the Donetsk region, Mayor Vadym Lyakh wrote on Facebook that on Sunday fierce shelling had killed at least six people, including a 10-year-old girl.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin will not congratulate his counterpart Joe Biden on U.S. Independence Day because of Washington's "unfriendly" actions towards Moscow, the Kremlin said. "Congratulations this year can hardly be considered appropriate," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said. "The United States's unfriendly policies are the reason."

• Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station have celebrated Russia's capture of the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, posted pictures of cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergei Korsakov smiling as they held up flags of Russia's proxies in eastern Ukraine, the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic.

• The head of Germany's energy regulator warned that $15.64 billion worth of credit lines provided by the government to buy gas for storage facilities may not be enough, in a WirtschaftsWoche magazine interview. Bundesnetzagentur head Klaus Mueller said the supply squeeze may push up prices even higher and prevent Germany from filling up its gas storage ahead of the winter.

• While Russia is claiming its advance in Luhansk is a significant moment in the war, it has come at a high cost to Russia's military, said Neil Melvin of the London-based think tank RUSI. "Ukraine's position was never that they could defend all of this. What they've been trying to do is to slow down the Russian assault and cause maximum damage, while they build up for a counteroffensive," he said.

• The French government has said it will suspend expulsions of foreign students fleeing war in Ukraine, a sensitive issue that has seen European countries accused of racist double standards. "We have introduced a moratorium for students until September," a government source told AFP.

IN DETAIL

Russian forces in Ukraine will focus on trying to seize all of the Donetsk region, having forced Ukrainian troops to withdraw from the last major city under their control in the neighboring Luhansk region, the governor of Luhansk said on Monday.

After abandoning an assault on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, during the early weeks of the war, Russia concentrated its military operation on the industrial Donbas heartland that comprises the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, where Moscow-backed separatist proxies have been fighting Ukraine since 2014.

Russia said it had established full control over the Luhansk region after Ukrainian forces pulled out of the bombed-out city of Lysychansk.

"In terms of the military, it is bad to leave positions, but there is nothing critical (in the loss of Lysychansk). We need to win the war, not the battle for Lysychansk," Governor Serhiy Gaidai told Reuters in an interview.

"It hurts a lot, but it's not losing the war."

He said the withdrawal from Lysychansk had been "centralized," indicating that it had been planned and orderly, but that Ukrainian forces had risked being surrounded.

"Still, for them (Russian forces) goal number one is the Donetsk region. Sloviansk and Bakhmut will come under attack - Bakhmut has already started being shelled very hard," he said.

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Gaidai said that he expected the city of Sloviansk and the town of Bakhmut, in particular, to come under attack as Russia tries to take full control of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow said the capture of Lysychansk less than a week after taking neighboring Sievierdonetsk meant it had "liberated" Luhansk, a major Kremlin goal.

Moscow said it would give the captured territory to the self-proclaimed Russian-backed Luhansk People's Republic, whose independence it recognized on the eve of the war.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Sunday night, vowed to regain the lost territory with the help of long-range Western weapons.

Zelenskyy said Russia was concentrating its firepower on the Donbas front, but Ukraine would hit back with long-range weapons such as the U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket launchers.

"The fact that we protect the lives of our soldiers, our people, plays an equally important role. We will rebuild the walls, we will win back the land, and people must be protected above all else," Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.