UKRAINE, Aug 22 — On August 20, Anna Skorokhod, a people’s deputy, submitted a draft law to the Ukrainian Parliament on changing the administrative borders of Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv regions.

The draft law stipulates that the unoccupied territories of the Kramatorsk and Bakhmut districts of the Donetsk region, as well as the Svatovo and Siverskodonetsk districts of the Luhansk region, have to be added to the Kharkiv region.

According to the explanation note, the Russia-Ukraine war complicated administrative ties between individual settlements, which negatively affects the financial security of educational and healthcare institutions. 

The explanation note also says this applies to providing social assistance to the population of the territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions controlled by Ukraine.

Skorokhod said that spending $1,2 million per month on maintaining the Luhansk and Donetsk regional state administrations is impractical, so the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions can perform these functions.

The bill also proposes to add the unoccupied territories of the Volnovakha and Pokrovsk districts of Donetsk Oblast to Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

The Russians continue their offensive in the Donetsk region. On August 11, DeepState, an OSINT war monitoring group, reported on Russian advances near the Dobropillia settlement. 

On August 21, Ukrainian military officials said they had “cut off” the advance of Russian soldiers in this direction.

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