Retaking Ukraine's Luhansk region is slow going because so many Russian troops fled there in other retreats, its governor said

• Ukraine retook almost all of Kharkiv in a swift counteroffensive sending Russians into retreat.
• The governor of the occupied Luhansk region said many of those who fled ended up there.

Taking back the Ukrainian region of Luhansk from Russian forces has been slower than in other regions because so many Russian troops have fled there, its governor said.

Haidai Serhiy, the governor of Luhansk, noted wrote on Telegram on Wednesday morning that "many Ukrainians expected the de-occupation of Luhansk Region to be as quick as that of Kharkiv Region."

Ukraine rapidly retook much of Kharkiv's surroundings after it launched its counteroffensive at the start of September. (The city of Kharkiv remained in Ukrainian hands the whole time.)

But Serhiy said that trying to make that type of progress in Luhansk hasn't been possible, partly because the many Russians fleeing Kharkiv were able to act as reinforcements there.

"However, it was in our region that all those soldiers who fled from Kharkiv Oblast gathered," he said.

Russian soldiers retreated from parts of Kharkiv when Ukraine started to fight back there last month.

And many Russian troops retreated into Luhansk and the Donetsk regions.

Luhansk and Donetsk, unlike Kharkiv, are among the four regions that Russia claims to have annexed via heavily-criticized referendums. In reality it does not control vast areas of those four territories, where Ukraine has been pushing back hard.

Luhansk is still almost entirely occupied by Russian troops, though Ukraine has retaken some small areas since it started its counteroffensive, preventing the region from being fully under Russian control.

Serhiy said last month that Russian troops who survived Ukraine's retaking of the city of Lyman in the Donetsk region had also come to Luhansk.

He said on Wednesday that Ukraine's advances had been slowed in Luhansk as Russia has recently poured a lot of resources into the region.

Serhiy said "freshly mobilized Russians, prisoners, and a lot of equipment and air defense have arrived in Luhansk region."

Russian-backed separatists created what they called the Luhansk People's Republic in 2014, declaring independence from the rest of Ukraine. But the move was not recognized by Ukraine or almost any of the rest of the world.

They installed their own pro-Russia government officials, even as Ukraine still had its own leaders in the region.

Russia formally recognized the regions as independent in February, part of President Vladimir Putin's efforts to justify a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The referendum there was Russia's attempt to formally make the land part of Russia.

That vote and others were widely dismissed as a sham, with soldiers reportedly coercing people to vote by threatening to shoot their families.

The US, EU, NATO and other states said the outcomes were illegitimate, and the nations of the UN overwhelmingly voted to condemn the annexations.