MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia has taken full control of Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region, more than three years after President Vladimir Putin ordered thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian-backed head of the region told Russian state television.

A Russian-appointed official has claimed that Moscow’s forces now fully occupy Ukraine’s Luhansk region, one of the four territories illegally annexed by Russia in 2022. If true, this marks the first region completely seized after more than three years of war.

A Russia-appointed official in Ukraine’s occupied Luhansk region says that Moscow’s forces have overrun all of it.