It was not immediately clear whether Ukrainian forces holding the Azot chemical plant, their last bastion in the city, had begun to leave.
Yuriy Butusov, a Ukrainian journalist reporting from the city, said the evacuation took place the night before it was announced, and called the decision “bitter but long overdue”.
“We left Severodonetsk,” he wrote on Facebook. “Tonight, Ukrainian troops left part of the Severodonetsk industrial zone in an organized manner. On the section of the front where I was, the retreat was under fire, but without losses. “
“Ukrainian soldiers fought with dignity for the city and did more than possible in such extremely difficult conditions. Without bridges and without pontoons, every battle day was a constant heroism, “he added.
Monthly battle
Severodonetsk is the Ukrainian administrative capital of Luhansk after Russian-led separatists seized Luhansk itself in 2014.
Russia launched an offensive to capture it in April after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his generals to concentrate on capturing Donbass after the failure of his attack on Kyiv.
It took them weeks of intense fighting, preceded by massive destructive artillery bombardment to reach the outskirts of the city, despite the deployment of huge concentrations of troops and equipment.
Fighting between the street and the street in the city itself has been raging for a month, with some areas changing hands several times until the Ukrainians were brought into the Nitrogen plant.
They were to be delivered by rafts after the Russians destroyed the bridges connecting the city with Ukrainian Lisichansk.
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