Russian troops have withdrawn from the strategic city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine “in connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement,” according to Reuters, citing Russia’s defence ministry.

Ukraine forces encircled Russian forces in the eastern town of Lyman earlier today. More than 5,000 Russian troops were stationed here, news agency Associated Press reported.

The retreat comes a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed “accession treaties” formalising Russia’s illegal annexation of four occupied regions in Ukraine, marking Europe’s largest forcible takeover of territory since World War.

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Where is Lymam?

Lyman is a city in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Administratively, it is designated as a city of oblast importance. It also served as the administrative centre of Lyman Raion until 2016, despite not being a part of the raion. It is still the centre of Lyman hromada.

In the Lyman district, archaeologists have found Neolithic stone sculptures as well as Scythian artefacts from the fourth and third centuries BCE. A fort was constructed there in the seventeenth century, according to the Russian-language Entsiklopedicheskii slovar, to protect Sloboda Ukraine’s southern boundaries against raids by Crimean Tatars. It initially appears in writing about the middle of the 1600s. Lyman was specifically identified as one of the cities included in the Azov Governorate during the administrative reform undertaken in 1708 by Moscow tsar Peter I. In 1925, the Soviet government gave the town the prefix Krasnyi (Red) for ideological reasons.

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After the de-communization law was passed in 2015, the city’s name was changed back to Lyman, dropping the prefix Krasnyi. On February 4, 2016, the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, accepted the modification.

Lyman is a vital railway junction. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian troops captured Lyman after a battle for the city on May 27. As part of the Ukrainian Kharkiv counteroffensive, Ukrainian troops advanced to Lyman on September 10 and engaged Russian troops there.

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On September 30, Russian military bloggers reported that Ukrainian forces had besieged the city and that street-to-street fighting had erupted in the neighbouring town of Zarichne.