Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said his country’s forces had taken back 6,000 sq km (2,400 square miles) of Russian-held territory in the country’s south and east. Ukraine’s forces have continued to press their counterattack in Kharkiv, seeking to take control of almost all of the province. Ukraine’s troops headed north, reportedly recapturing towns all the way to the Russian border.
Ukraine’s deputy defence minister said fighting is still raging in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region. Hanna Malyar said: “The aim is to liberate the Kharkiv region and beyond – all the territories occupied by the Russian Federation. Fighting is continuing. It is still early to say full control has been established over Kharkiv region. Our strength stems from the fact that we are very motivated and that we plan operations thoroughly.”
The Ukrainian military says it had freed more than 20 settlements in 24 hours. In recent days, Kyiv’s forces have captured territory at least twice the size of greater London, according to the British Ministry of Defence.
Ukraine’s military says the Antonivsky Bridge across the Dnieper River near occupied Kherson in the south is now unusable by Russian military
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said Ukrainian forces had made important progress in their counteroffensive against Russian troops, although it was too early to predict the outcome. “Clearly we’ve seen significant progress by the Ukrainians, particularly in the north-east, and that is a product of the support we’ve provided, but first and foremost it’s a product of the extraordinary courage and resilience of the Ukrainian armed forces and the Ukrainian people,” Blinken told reporters in Mexico City.
Ukraine’s State Border Service has issued a video which purports to show soldiers tearing down Russian banners and burning the Russian flag in Vovchansk, which is in the north of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and very close to the border with Russia.
Russia’s military commanders have stopped sending new units into Ukraine after the counteroffensive, the general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine said on its Facebook page on Monday. “The current situation in the theatre of operations and distrust of the higher command forced a large number of volunteers to categorically refuse the prospect of service in combat conditions.”
Russian troops have left behind stockpiles of ammunition and other supplies following Ukraine’s counteroffensive in Kharkiv oblast, the Kyiv Independent reports. One analyst estimated that more than 300 vehicles, including tanks, self-propelled mortars and supply trucks, had been lost between 7 and 11 September.
Russia responded to the counteroffensive by launching missile strikes that cut electricity and water supplies in Kharkiv city for a second time in less than 24 hours, knocking out both on Monday morning just hours after the city authorities had restored 80% of the utilities that had been cut overnight.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, appeared on state TV on Monday evening, chairing a meeting on the economy at which he made no reference to the military situation and said Russia was holding up in the face of western sanctions. “The economic blitzkrieg tactics, the onslaught they were counting on, did not work”.
Germany is well-positioned to get through the winter despite reduced gas flows from Russia thanks to measures including extending two nuclear power plants’ lifespans, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, will say on Tuesday.
Russia detained a top manager of an aviation factory on suspicion of passing secret military information to Ukraine, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday, citing the FSB federal security agency.
Clashes have erupted between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, according to Russian news agencies, in a resumption of decades-old hostilities linked to the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian government said it would invoke a cooperation agreement with Russia and appeal to a Russia-led security bloc, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, as well as the UN security council.
The US assesses that Russia has largely ceded its gains near Kharkiv and many retreating Russian soldiers have exited Ukraine, moving over the border back into Russia, a senior US military official said on Monday. However, the US-based Institute for the Study of War thinktank said that “Ukraine has turned the tide in its favour, but the current counteroffensive will not end the war”.
Ukrainian authorities have said they are capturing so many Russian prisoners of war the country is running out of space to put them, the Associated Press reports. Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich did not specify the number of Russian prisoners, but said the PoWs would be exchanged for Ukrainian service members held by Moscow. Military intelligence spokesperson Andrey Yusov said the captured troops included “significant” numbers of Russian officers.
Municipal deputies from 18 districts of Moscow and St Petersburg have signed a public statement demanding that Vladimir Putin resign. “We, the municipal deputies of Russia, believe that the actions of President Vladimir Putin harm the future of Russia and its citizens,” read the statement published by Ksenia Torstrem, the municipal deputy of the Semenovsky district of St Petersburg. “Deputies are not yet forbidden to have an opinion. And it is also not forbidden to speak for the resignation of the president. He is not a monarch, but a hired worker, receives a salary from our taxes.”
