Russia closes in on key city as EU clinches oil deal

Russian forces now control "most" of eastern Ukraine's key city of Severodonetsk, a regional governor said Tuesday, while EU leaders were split over banning gas from Moscow after agreeing to embargo most of its oil.

Ukraine meanwhile pushed on with an investigation into war crimes since the Russian invasion. Officials said thousands had been committed in the eastern Donbas region alone and that it had jailed two Russian soldiers elsewhere in the country. 

Severodonetsk is one of the industrial hubs that lie on Russia's path to capturing the Donbas's Lugansk region, where Moscow has shifted the bulk of its firepower since failing to capture Kyiv in the war's early stages.

"Unfortunately, today, Russian troops control most of the city," Lugansk governor Sergiy Gaiday said in a video, insisting Ukraine's military was not in danger of being surrounded.

He added that "90 percent" of Severodonetsk had been destroyed.

Gaiday also warned that Russian forces had hit a tank containing nitric acid at a Severodonetsk chemical plant and called on people to stay in their shelters.

EU leaders meeting for a second day in Brussels were only partly successful in tightening the economic screws on Moscow.

A compromise oil embargo deal reached late Monday, meant to punish Russia for its invasion, cuts "a huge source of financing for its war machine", European Council chief Charles Michel tweeted.