Leader of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LNR) Igor Plotnitsky has left Lugansk and is currently in Russia, Director of the Communication Department of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Artem Shevchenko has said, citing his own sources.

"According to my sources, Luhansk terrorist leader Igor 'Plotva' Plotnitsky fled to Russia. Spiders in a jar continue to eat each other," Shevchenko wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday, November 21.

In this regard, he recalled that the first leader of Luhansk militants, Valery Bolotov, had also left the occupied Donbas and stayed for some time in the Russian capital, but "suddenly died there" on January 27, 2017.

Earlier on November 21, the press service of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine reported that its representatives had recorded the presence of military-type vehicles and armed men in Luhansk, as well as and a convoy of military style trucks, armored personnel carriers and civilian cars with armed men, which probably moved from separate districts of Donetsk region in the direction of Luhansk.

"Today in Luhansk city the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission observed the presence of military-type vehicles and armed men in the area around the building previously housing the Department of the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine in Luhansk region," the OSCE SMM reported on its Facebook page.

In addition, the press service reported that an SMM patrol observed a convoy of vehicles consisting of at least six military style trucks, two APCs, a mounted ZU-23 and over 20 civilian cars without registration plates with at least 50 armed men on the road near Debaltseve (Donetsk region).

"A similar convoy, likely the same was observed later by a different SMM patrol in Vesela Tarasivka (15km west of Luhansk) moving in the direction of Luhansk city," the report says.