List of cities in Luhansk Oblast

Cities in Luhansk Oblast
Location	Luhansk Oblast
Number	37 (as of 2022)
Populations	4,148–397,677

There are 37 populated places in Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine, that have been officially granted city status (Ukrainian: місто, romanized: misto) by the Verkhovna Rada, the country's parliament.^[1] Settlements with more than 10,000 people are eligible for city status although the status is typically also granted to settlements of historical or regional importance.^[2][3][4] As of 5 December 2001, the date of the first and only official census in the country since independence,^[a] the most populous city in the oblast was the regional capital Luhansk with a population of 463,097 people, while the least populous city was Almazna, with a population of 5,061 people.^[5][6] Almazna is also the most recent settlement to receive city status, having been granted the status by the Verkhovna Rada in 1977.^[7]

From independence in 1991 until 2020, 14 cities in the oblast were designated as cities of regional significance (municipalities), which had self-government under city councils, while the oblast's remaining 23 cities were located in 18 raions (districts) as cities of district significance, which are subordinated to the governments of the raions.^[8][9][6] On 18 July 2020, an administrative reform abolished and merged the oblast's raions and cities of regional significance into eight new, expanded raions.^[2][10] The eight raions that make up the oblast are Alchevsk, Dovzhansk, Luhansk, Rovenky, Shchastia, Sievierodonetsk, Starobilsk, and Svatove raion.^[11][12] After the enactment of decommunization laws, nine cities within the oblast were renamed in 2016 for their former names' connection to people, places, events, and organizations associated with the Soviet Union.^[13][14] The renamed cities are Bokovo-Khrustalne, Dovzhansk, Holubivka, Kadiivka, Khrustalnyi, Kypuche, Petrovo-Krasnosillia, Sorokyne, and Voznesenivka, which were previously named Vakhrusheve, Sverdlovsk, Kirovsk, Stakhanov, Krasnyi Luch, Artemivsk, Petrovske, Krasnodon, and Chervonopartyzansk, respectively.^[15]

Following the Donbas war, pro-Russian separatist forces occupied all cities located in the Alchevsk, Dovzhansk, Luhansk, and Rovenky raions by 2014.^[16] Additional cities were occupied by Russian troops after 24 February 2022, during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.^[17][18] Since the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Lysychansk on 3 July 2022, all cities in the oblast have been occupied by Russian forces.^[19] Due to the occupation of the territory of the four reformed raions by separatist forces at the time of the 2016 renaming and 2020 administrative reform, the nine cities' new names and the four raions have only de jure status.^[16][20][21]

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