Ukrainian forces broke through the Russian lines in the southern province of Kherson, driving the occupation forces back to 000 miles on Monday, just hours after Ukraine claimed victory in the Donbas town of Lyman.
The advances deliver on kyiv’s promises to ignore Moscow’s claims to have annexed the occupied territory and claim it as part of territorial Russia.
Ukrainian forces captured several villages along the western bank of the Dniper River in the northern part of the province.
In a rare Russian admission of loss, Vladimir Saldo, the installed occupation authority by the Kremlin in the region, told Russian state television that the situation was “tense”.
“In fact, there was progress” said Saldo, pointing to the town of Dudchany, a rural place on the Dniper, a few 20 miles from the line of the front, as the center of the Ukrainian advance.
The central government in kyiv had yet to confirm the advance on Monday, but Ukraine’s regional authorities in Kherson reported a series of victories throughout the Dniper river, north of Dudchany.
According to the first reports, it is not clear if the Ukrainian forces took Dudchany itself or if they were still on the outskirts of the village.
If confirmed, reports mark the fastest advance of Ukrainian forces along the southern front des from the beginning of the war.
The city of Kherson, about 70 miles downriver from Dudchany, and the surrounding region was among the first to fall to the Russian invasion in February, giving Russian troops ample time to dig in.
In contrast to Ukraine’s swift and unexpected charge through occupied territory in northeastern Kharkiv province last month, kyiv’s southern offensive was highly anticipated and had not gained much territory from the Ukrainian military before Monday’s victories. .
Like its operations in the north, the offensive in southern Ukraine has sought to control Russian supply lines. Weeks of so-called “shaping operations” in the summer used US-made HIMARS and other long-range weapons to bring down bridges across the Dniper and hamper Russian resupply efforts.
The breakthrough is also among the first to come after the fake referendums of Russia and the subsequent claim to have annexed the Kherson province, along with the Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia provinces.
The Kremlin previously said that any attack on the four annexed provinces would be treated as an attack on Russia, before calling for 300,20 additional. additional soldiers in a wildly unpopular mobilization.
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