The Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Lt. Gen Valery Zaluzny, admitted today Tuesday that the Ukrainian soldiers retreated “to the periphery” of Marinka, a commune in Donetsk, which Moscow said yesterday it had passed into its control.

“The fact that we have moved towards the Marinka district and that, in some places, we have already crossed the boundaries of the community, should not cause a general outcry”, Zaluzny said at a press conference he gave. According to the lieutenant general, Ukrainian soldiers are still in the northern part of this city but “they have prepared a line of defense outside the community’ and towards it they will fold.

Marinka “doesn’t exist anymore,” he added, because of the extensive destruction it suffered from the fighting.

Russia announced yesterday that it had placed this city under its control which is five kilometers southwest of Donetsk. Marinka had been turned into a fortress by Ukrainian army since 2014, when the clashes with the pro-Russian separatists of Donbas began.

Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the capture of Marinka, which he said would remove Ukrainian artillery from Donetsk and allow Russian forces to have a “larger business area” in this zone.

Zaluzny estimated that Russia “today has the power to concentrate its efforts on the destruction of a city like Bakhmut within three months. “I fully understand that our fighters are doing a very difficult job under extremely difficult conditions,” he concluded.