Russian defenses in the south of the nation have been breached by Ukrainian forces, who are also stepping up their quick onslaught in the east to retake additional land in Russian-annexed territories and jeopardize Russian troops’ supply routes.
Ukrainian forces recovered three villages on Monday in an advance along the vital Dnipro River, marking their biggest success in the south since the outbreak of the war, according to Ukrainian officials and a Russian-installed authority in the region.
The southern operations command of the military reported in a nighttime update that Ukrainian forces in the south had destroyed 31 Russian tanks and one multiple rocket launcher.
The battlefield accounts were not immediately corroborated by Reuters.
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Even as Russia has attempted to heighten the stakes by annexing land, demanding mobilization, and threatening nuclear retribution, the southern breakthrough matches recent Ukrainian victories in the east.
Two of the four Russian-occupied territories that Moscow last week seized after what it called referendums—votes that Kyiv and Western nations criticized as unlawful and coercive—have seen significant progress from Ukraine.
Reuters observed columns of Ukrainian military vehicles moving on Monday to fortify the rail hub of Lyman, which had been retaken over the weekend, and a staging area to press into the Donbas region, as an indication that Ukraine is gaining ground on the eastern front.
Without providing further information, President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that the Ukrainian army had taken back towns in a number of places.
“New population centres have been liberated in several regions.
“Heavy fighting is going on in several sectors of the front,” Zelensky said in a video address.
Psychiatric hospital in the village of Svatovo, a target on the way to retaking the important cities of Lysychansk and Sivierodonetsk, has been taken over, according to Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of Luhansk, one of the two regions that make up the Donbas.
“There is quite a network of underground rooms in the building and they have taken up defensive positions,” he told Ukrainian television.
According to Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed leader in the seized portions of Ukraine’s Kherson province, Ukrainian troops have retaken the town of Dudchany in the south along the west bank of the Dnipro River, which divides the nation.
