Ukrainian troops have pushed Russian forces out of a number of settlements in the region held by Moscow since the first days of its invasion, and on Friday the Ukrainian army appeared to be continuing its rapid advance. A Russian official in the occupied part of the Kharkiv region admitted that Moscow’s troops were in the rear. “The very fact of breaching our defenses is already a substantial victory for the Ukrainian armed forces,” Vitaly Gadchev told state television, adding that Ukraine’s advance was “very sharp and rapid.” Gadchev said “heavy fighting” was taking place near the town of Balaklia, which was recaptured from Ukraine on Thursday. “We do not control Balaklia. Efforts are being made to dislodge the Ukrainian forces, but fierce fighting is taking place and our troops are being held back on the approaches.” For weeks, Ukrainian officials had telegraphed plans for a planned counteroffensive in the southern Kherson region, but the main focus of this week’s counteroffensive was Kharkiv in the northeast, taking everyone by surprise, apparently including the Russians. Moscow responded on Friday by firing rockets into the city center, according to local officials, who said at least 10 people, including three children, were injured in an attack that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff condemned as revenge for its success. Ukrainian on the battlefield. “For every success of the armed forces of Ukraine, for every victory, the Russians … respond with blows to innocent people,” wrote Andriy Yermak on Telegram, confirming that children were among the wounded. The rockets hit a children’s arts center and a school, as well as private homes, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. The next major Ukrainian target is likely to be the city of Kupiansk. On Thursday, Russian occupation authorities said they planned to evacuate women and children from Kupyansk, citing Ukrainian artillery fire on the city. A photo shared on social media on Friday appeared to show Ukrainian forces at one of the city’s entrances, posing with a Ukrainian flag. The photo could not be immediately verified. The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based thinktank, said Ukrainian forces could retake the city in the next three days. Taking the city would cut communications links between occupied areas and “impede Russian efforts to support offensive and defensive operations,” the institute said. Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had recaptured more than 1,000 square kilometers of territory from the Russians since early September. “Our heroes have already liberated dozens of settlements. And today this movement continued, there are new results,” the president said. Zelenskiy’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the successful counterattack showed that Ukraine had “proved its ability to occupy its territories” and was able to use weapons supplied to Kyiv by Western countries. “There will be no freezing of the conflict,” Podolyak tweeted. Top US officials have expressed approval of the Ukrainian advance. “We see Ukraine making real, demonstrable progress in a deliberate way,” Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken said, speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday, the day after his surprise visit to Kyiv. However, Blinken cautioned against over-optimism and warned that the fighting is likely to continue for some time. “There’s a huge number of Russian forces that are in Ukraine, and unfortunately, tragically, horribly, President Putin has shown that he’s going to throw a lot of people into it at a huge cost to Russia,” he said. William Burns, head of the CIA, said Vladimir Putin had underestimated both Ukraine’s resolve and the international community. “Putin’s bet right now is that he will be tougher than the Ukrainians, the Europeans, the Americans… I believe, and my colleagues at the CIA believe, that Putin is as wrong on that bet as he is deeply wrong on the affairs of. back to last February about Ukraine’s will to resist,” Burns said at a conference in Washington, in comments reported by the New York Times. “Not only has the weakness of the Russian military been exposed … but long-term damage will be done to the Russian economy and to generations of Russians,” he said. Putin, speaking this week, claimed Russia had “lost nothing” during the six-month war in Ukraine, but there was alarm among Russian nationalists over Ukraine’s military successes this week. Some Russian military commentators criticized their military for not giving enough warning to Balaklia residents that they would withdraw, leaving their local accomplices to face the wrath of Ukrainian authorities. Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s Minister of Temporarily Occupied Territories, announced on Friday that Kyiv will create an agency for occupied territories that will coordinate the various branches of state and government in the regions. “[The agency] it will mean that the dispossession and then the reintegration will be done as efficiently and quickly as possible,” Verehshuk told Ukrainian television. He said there had been an increase in calls to a government hotline for people in the occupied territories wanting to leave, but there were no official humanitarian corridors agreed with Russia. “We have written to Russia to open humanitarian corridors, but we have received a refusal, so we are asking the IAEA, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to force Russia to open humanitarian corridors,” Vereschuk said. Currently, there are only three crossing points along the front line for the millions of civilians living in the occupied territories. People wait in lines for days, often surrounded by shelling. In the first months of the war, Russia agreed to open official corridors to allow mass evacuations from occupied areas such as the Kiev region and Mariupol, but only after weeks of pressure from international leaders and the UN.
