Ukrainian troops continued their week-long push into the eastern region of Kharkiv on Sunday, liberating more villages and towns as Russian forces that had seized the region since March scattered in a chaotic retreat. Suddenly, cities and towns like Kupyansk and Izyum that have been centers of Russian political and military control are once again under the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag. Towns that the Russian military spent weeks trying to capture this year, such as Lysychansk, in the neighboring Luhansk region, are once again on the front lines, this time with Ukrainian forces advancing. General Valery Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine’s army, said on Sunday that more than 3,000 square kilometers – an area larger than Luxembourg – had been retaken since early September and that Ukrainian forces were now within 50 kilometers of the Russian border in places. of the Kharkiv region. Later in the day, videos posted online suggested that Ukrainian forces had entered several settlements on or near the official border between the two countries. The Ukrainian counteroffensive marks the biggest shift in the front line since April, when Russian forces withdrew from Kyiv after a failed attempt to take the capital. Firefighters of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine put out a fire after a Russian rocket attack hit a power station in Kharkiv on September 11, 2022. Kostiantyn Liberov/The Associated Press Russia acknowledged it had lost control of parts of the Kharkiv region, including the former military hub of Izyum and the nearby town of Balakliya, but said it was part of a wider plan to focus on the goal of capturing the nearby Donetsk region, where Russian forces have made little progress since capturing the cities of Lysychansk and Sieverodonetsk in June. “It was decided to regroup Russian forces stationed near Balaklia and Izium to strengthen efforts in the direction of Donetsk,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. The city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest with a pre-war population of 1.4 million, came to a standstill on Sunday night. Regional governor Oleh Synyehubov said electricity and water supplies were affected after Russian missiles hit unspecified “critical infrastructure”. Members of Ukraine pose for a photo in the recently liberated settlement of Vasylenkove in the Kharkiv region in this handout photo released on September 10, 2022. TERRITORIAL DEFENSE OF UKRAINE/Reuters Russian forces also hit energy infrastructure in the central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk on Sunday, knocking out power to several towns, the region’s governor said. “Some cities and communities are without power. The Russians have hit energy infrastructure. They are unable to come to terms with defeats on the battlefield,” Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram. The full extent of the Ukrainian advance on Kharkiv was not immediately verifiable, as the military has banned media from the front lines in recent weeks, part of a strategy that allowed them to launch a surprise counterattack. But videos posted on social media showed crowds of residents, some crying with joy, running through the streets to greet Ukrainian forces who had ended their six-month occupation of their towns and villages. In several recently liberated cities, propaganda posters saying, “We and Russia are one people,” were torn down from billboards by Ukrainian troops. Ukrainian flags are placed on statues in a square in Balakliya, Kharkiv region, on September 10, 2022. JUAN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images Other videos showed lines of abandoned Russian tanks and other weaponry, much of it with the “Z” and “V” symbols used to identify vehicles involved in the 200-day invasion of Ukraine. The success of the Kharkiv offensive appears to be at least partly due to messages from Ukraine that its main counterattack would come in the southern Kherson region. As Russia redeployed units south to defend Kherson, Ukraine suddenly pushed forward on Kharkiv. “There has been a massive disinformation campaign about the true direction of the attack. So the Russians expected the Ukrainian offensive to start in the south in Kherson, but it started in Kharkiv. So it looks like the Ukrainians, you know, fooled the Russians,” said Taras Berezovets, a veteran political analyst who now serves as a press officer embedded with Ukrainian special forces. “There was a huge panic among the Russians. We saw them from our drones. They were jumping in Siverskiy Donets [River]. Some were in their underwear, because they left their uniforms.” Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, posted on his Telegram channel that Ukraine captured 20 abandoned Russian tanks, plus 20 others in need of repair, as well as 10 artillery pieces and dozens of armored infantry fighting vehicles. However, there was also evidence to suggest that Russian troops had committed atrocities, including extrajudicial executions, in the areas it had seized. After the Russian withdrawal from the Kiev region in April, Ukrainian forces recovered hundreds of bodies. Many of the victims had been shot in the head after their hands had been tied behind their backs. Mr Gerashchenko said two bodies that had been “tortured and shot in the head” had already been recovered in the Kharkiv region. “Butsa was occupied for 33 days. Lands that are being liberated now were occupied for more than six months,” he said. Reported by Reuters
