Ukrainian forces yesterday pushed its counteroffensive in the country’s east, exploiting quick gains they made in a week of fighting that has sharply changed the course of the conflict.
Ukraine’s quick action to reclaim Russia-occupied areas in the northeastern Kharkiv region forced Moscow to withdraw its troops to prevent them from being surrounded, and leave behind significant numbers of weapons and munitions in a hasty retreat as the war marked 200 days yesterday.
The jubilant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy mocked the Russians in a video address late on Saturday, saying that “the Russian army in these days is demonstrating the best that it can do — showing its back.”
Photo: Reuters
Yesterday, he posted a video of Ukrainian soldiers hoisting the national flag over Chkalovske, another town they reclaimed from the Russians in the counteroffensive.
Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Valerii Zaluzhnyi yesterday said that Ukraine had liberated about 3,000km2 since the beginning of the month, adding that Ukrainian troops are just 50km from the border with Russia.
The Russians’ pullback marked the biggest battlefield success for Ukrainian forces since they thwarted a Russian attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, at the start of the nearly seven-month war.
Photo: AFP
Ukraine’s attack in the Kharkiv region came as a surprise for Moscow, which had relocated many of its troops from the area to the south in expectation of the main Ukrainian counteroffensive there.
In an awkward attempt to save face, the Russian Ministry of Defense on Saturday said the troops’ withdrawal from Izyum and other areas in the Kharkiv region was intended to strengthen Russian forces in the Donetsk region to the south.
The claim sounded similar to the justification Russia gave for pulling back its forces from the Kyiv region earlier this year when they failed to take the capital.
The group of Russian forces around Izyum has been key for Moscow’s effort to capture the Donetsk region, and their pullback would dramatically weaken the Russian capability to press its offensive to Ukrainian strongholds of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk just south.
Igor Strelkov, who led Russia-backed separatists in the early months of the conflict in the Donbas region when it erupted in 2014, mocked the Russian defense ministry’s explanation of the retreat, suggesting that handing over Russia’s own territory near the border to Ukraine was a “contribution to Ukrainian settlement.”
The retreat drew angry comments from Russian military bloggers and nationalist commentators, who bemoaned it as a major defeat and urged the Kremlin to respond by stepping up war efforts.
Many scathingly criticized Russian authorities for continuing with fireworks and other lavish festivities in Moscow that marked a city holiday on Saturday, despite the debacle in Ukraine.
Just as the Russian forces were hastily pulling back from Izyum under Ukrainian fire, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the opening of a huge observation wheel at a Moscow park, a new transportation link and a sports arena.
The action underlined the Kremlin’s effort to keep pretending that the war it calls a “special military operation” was going according to plan without affecting the situation in the country.
Pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov called the festivities in Moscow a grave political mistake.
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