Military: 1,500 dead in Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine

According to official Ukrainian figures, around 1,500 people have been killed in the particularly hard-fought eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk since the beginning of the war.

Among them were soldiers as well as civilians, the head of the local military administration, Oleksandr Stryuk, said on Friday.

Many people have also fled. Of the former 130,000 inhabitants, only about a 10th are still there.

The governor of Luhansk, Serhii Haidai, also reported that four people had been killed by Russian shelling on the residential areas of Sievierodonetsk the day before.

More than three months after the start of the Russian war, the large city of Sievierodonetsk is one of the last parts of Luhansk still controlled by the Ukrainian army. Not far from the city limits, however, there is already fierce fighting.

Observers fear that Ukrainian brigades in Sievierodonetsk could be encircled by Russian and pro-Russian military forces.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fears a largely depopulated Donbass region - made up of the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk - in the face of massive Russian attacks in the east.

With their superior firepower, the attacking Russian troops put pressure on the Ukrainian defenders around Sievierodonetsk, he said in his evening video address in Kiev late Thursday.

"The ongoing offensive of the occupiers in the Donbass could make the region deserted," Zelensky said.

Towns would be destroyed, people killed or abducted. This, he said, was "an obvious policy of genocide."

Friday is the 93rd day of war. Russia had attacked neighbouring Ukraine on February 24.