Ukrainian forces yesterday said that their lightning counteroffensive took back more ground in the previous 24 hours, as Russia responded with strikes on some of the recaptured ground.
The territorial shifts were one of Russia’s biggest reversals since its forces were turned back from Kyiv in the earliest days of the nearly seven months of fighting, yet Moscow signaled it was no closer to agreeing a negotiated peace.
Moscow yesterday announced air, rocket and artillery attacks on reclaimed areas in the Kharkiv region, a day after Kyiv said Russian strikes on electricity infrastructure caused power failures.
Photo: AFP
The retaliatory fire came as Ukraine said its forces had recaptured more than 20 additional settlements, claiming “Russian troops are hastily abandoning their positions and fleeing.”
Kyiv had already announced the recapture of the strategic city of Izyum in the nation’s east, one of a series of victories claimed against the Russian army.
Ukraine said its forces recaptured 500km2 in the southern Kherson region which were in addition to the huge gains in the east over the weekend.
Photo: Reuters
Moscow conceded having lost territory, which experts saw as a serious blow to its war ambitions, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saw no prospects for negotiations.
“The special military operation continues and will continue until the objectives that were originally set are achieved,” Peskov said, using Russia’s terminology for the internationally condemned war.
Eastern parts of Ukraine were hit with widespread electricity blackouts on Sunday evening, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said deliberately hit civilian infrastructure.
He blamed “Russian terrorists.”
“A total blackout in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, a partial one in the Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions,” Zelenskiy said in a statement on social media.
“No military facilities,” he wrote. “The goal is to deprive people of light and heat.”
In the Kharkiv region, a Russian strike on a power station killed one employee, Kharkiv Governor Oleg Synegubov said.
He added that power had been partially brought back.
Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said that the Russian attacks were an “act of desperation following Russia’s immense losses and retreat in eastern Ukraine.”
The Russian strikes hit 15 locations on Sunday, from Kramatorsk in the east to Mykolaiv in the south and Dnipro in between, the Ukrainian military said.
The blackouts hit regions with an estimated combined population of 9 million people — including territory controlled by Russia.
The speed of Ukraine’s fightback has apparently caught Russia’s military off guard, bringing swathes of territory Moscow had controlled for months back into Kyiv’s fold.
Images posted by the Ukrainian military showed crates of munitions and military hardware scattered across territory abandoned by Russian forces.
In his evening address on Sunday, Zelenskiy praised the troops who had “liberated hundreds of our cities and villages ... and most recently Balakliya, Izyum and Kupiansk.”
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