Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed laws absorbing four Ukrainian regions into Russia and finalise their annexation as war continues to rage.
Earlier this week, both houses of the Russian parliament ratified treaties making the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions part of Russia.
Russia moved to annex those regions after holding what it called referendums over several days from September 23 – votes that were denounced by Kyiv and Western governments as illegal and coercive.
However, Mr Zelensky overnight named eight small towns in Kherson in the south as recently having been recaptured.
“This week alone, since the Russian pseudo-referendum, dozens of population centres have been liberated. These are in Kherson, Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions all together,” he said in a Tuesday night address.
It came as Ukraine’s counter-offensive was gaining fresh momentum after its forces recaptured territory and destroyed dozens of Russian tanks to achieve an important new breakthrough in the south of the country.
Several settlements were recaptured as Ukrainian troops advanced towards the southern city of Kherson in a success that also threatens to cut off Russian supply lines.
The advance, which saw the destruction of 31 Russian tanks and a multiple rocket launcher, came at the same time as a separate advance by Kyiv’s forces in eastern Ukraine and was hailed by the country’s president Volodomyr Zelensky.
“New population centres have been liberated in several regions,” he said in his daily video address, adding that “heavy fighting is going on in several sectors of the front.”
Despite the Kremlin’s apparent political bravado, the picture on the ground underscored the disarray of Putin’s attempt to annex four Ukrainian regions, while war was raging in all four.
The breakthrough near Kherson follows the weekend retreat of Russian forces from the town of Lyman in the eastern Luhansk region.
It came amid reports Russian troops had abandoned another area so rapidly that they left the bodies of their comrades in the streets.
A video showing the 35th marine brigade hoisting a Ukrainian flag above Davydiv Brid was posted by the country’s defence ministry. Several other nearby villages were recaptured.
