Ukrainian troops may retreat from E region

KYIV, May 28 (Reuters): Ukrainian forces may have to retreat from their last pocket in the Luhansk region to avoid being captured, a Ukrainian official said, as Russian troops press an advance in the east that has shifted the momentum of the three-month-old war.
A withdrawal could bring Russian President Vladimir Putin closer to his goal of capturing eastern Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk regions in full. His troops have gained ground in the two areas collectively known as the Donbas while blasting some towns to wastelands.
Luhansk's governor, Serhiy Gaidai, said Russian troops had entered Sievierodonetsk, the largest Donbas city still held by Ukraine, after trying to trap Ukrainian forces there for days. Gaidai said 90% of buildings in the town were damaged.
"The Russians will not be able to capture Luhansk region in the coming days as analysts have predicted," Gaidai said on Telegram, referring to Sievierodonetsk and its twin city Lysychansk across the Siverskiy Donets River.
"We will have enough strength and resources to defend ourselves. However it is possible that in order not to be surrounded we will have to retreat."
Russia's separatist proxies said they now controlled Lyman, a railway hub west of Sievierodonetsk. Ukraine said Russia had captured most of Lyman but that its forces were blocking an advance to Sloviansk, to the southwest.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine was protecting its land "as much as our current defence resources allow". Ukraine's military said it had repelled eight attacks in Donetsk and Luhansk on Friday, destroying tanks and armoured vehicles.
"If the occupiers think that Lyman and Sievierodonetsk will be theirs, they are wrong. Donbas will be Ukrainian," Zelensky said in an address.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Bloomberg UK that Putin "at great cost to himself and to the Russian military, is continuing to chew through ground in Donbas".
Russian troops advanced after piercing Ukrainian lines last week in the city of Popasna, south of Sievierodonetsk. Russian ground forces have captured several villages northwest of Popasna, Britain's defence ministry said.
Reached by Reuters journalists in Russian-held territory on Thursday, Popasna was in ruins. The bloated body of a dead man in combat uniform could be seen lying in a courtyard.
Kyiv decries looting
from Mariupol plant
A ship has entered the Ukrainian port of Mariupol for the first time since Russia completed its capture of the city to load metal and ship it east to Russia, TASS news agency reported on Saturday, in a move that Kyiv decried as looting.
A spokesperson for the port told TASS that the vessel would be loading 2,700 tonnes of metal before travelling 160 km (100 miles) east to the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Monday.
The spokesperson did not say where the metal being shipped had been produced.
Ukraine's Human Rights Ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova said the shipment amounted to looting by Russia.
"Looting in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine continues," she wrote on the Telegram messaging app. "Following the theft of Ukrainian grain, the occupiers resorted to exporting metal products from Mariupol."
Ukraine's largest steelmaker Metinvest on Friday said it was concerned that Russia may use several ships stranded in Mariupol to "steal and smuggle metallurgical products" belonging to the group. It accused Russia of piracy.
Asked on Saturday whether the metal due to be shipped out belonged to Metinvest, a company spokesman said: "We said yesterday that our metal is in the port of Mariupol, yes."